BC: ELECTRONIC VOTING
Here's a links list ..
ccrc.wustl.edu
electionbuyersguide.org
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Electronic Voting Hot List
This page contains a list of links to Internet sites with electronic-voting related information. It is intended as a resource list for those doing research on electronic voting and those interested in implementing electronic voting systems.
When I first started compiling this list I included only links related to electronic voting over public computer networks. However, I have since added links to a variety of related issues.
Let me know if you find a good link I missed. Please send suggestions for additional links to lorrie@acm.org.
Available Online Voting Systems
Experimental Electronic Voting System Descriptions and Software
Electronic Voting Protocol Papers
Real Internet Polls
Risks and Reliability of Electronic Voting - includes risks related to automated vote tabulation
Vote by Phone - the telephone, rather than the computer, can also be used to submit electronic ballots
Vote by Mail - another alternative to traditional ballot collection methods
Electronic Democracy/Direct Democracy - made more feasible by electronic voting
General Information
Related Information
Election Information (not necessarily electronic)
Voting Equipment and Services Vendors
You might also be interseted in my other voting pages and in the e-lection mailing list.
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Available Online Voting Systems
While there's been a lot of research on electronic voting systems, there isn't much software available that you can purchace or download and use to run an election immediatly. The systems described in this section may be useful to those running an election for a non-governmental organization.
Free Referenda & Elections Electronically (FREE) - open source system for conducting electronic votes
VoteBot - decision-support for distributed communities - start a poll, survey or election for free at this web site
eVote - voting software designed to be used in conjunction with the Majordomo electronic mailing list system. As of August 1998, a shareware version was available for Majordomo running under Linux. It costs $80 to register. According to the Web site, the authors will also do custom ports to other operating systems and mailing list managers for a fee.
TrueBallot, Inc. Democratic Governance Systems - actually, TrueBallot does not offer online products, but they do offer electronic voting booth, vote-by-mail, and vote-by-phone products for use in non-governmental elections
See also Voting Equipment and Services Vendors
Other solutions for running a non-governmental election:
Call up your local governmental election office and see if you can borrow voting equipment from them.
Hire someone (perhaps a computer science student from a local college) to setup a Web-based system for your group.
Experimental Electronic Voting System Descriptions and Software
Vivarto Voting Systems - a new idea on how to combine efficiency, democracy and expertise in governing large organizations with the help of modern information and communication technology
Sensus - description and source code for Sensus, an electronic polling system developed by Lorrie Cranor, based on a paper by Atsushi Fujioka, Tatsuaki Okamoto, and Kazuo Ohta.
Another implementation based on the Fujioka, Okamoto, and Ohta paper - by Ronald L. Rivest, Mark Herschberg, Ben Adida, and Randy Milbert. Unlike Sensus, this implementation continues to be maintained and improved.
A simple email voting system with no security
Creating a Secure Digital Voting Protocol for Campus Elections - paper by Ben Davenport, Alan Newberger, and Jason Woodard -- written for the undergraduate applied cryptography seminar at Princeton -- includes source code -- web-based system was used for the Princeton Undergraduate Student Government 1995 fall freshman class officer elections
Report on Electronic Voting for the Harvard Undergraduate Council (UC): Design, Implementation, and Results - unfortunately the design and implementation sections were never written, but you can get a vague idea about how the system worked from this report [used to be at hcs.harvard.edu - link no longer available]
Electronic Voting Protocol Papers
Andreu Riera-Jorba has several electronic voting papers on his web site
Multi-Authority Secret-Ballot Elections with Linear Work by R.J.F. Crarner, M. Franklin, L.A.M. Schoenmakers, and M. Yung
A LAN Voting Protocol by Vesna Hassler and Reinhard Posch [link no longer available]
An untraceable, universally verifiable voting scheme by Michael J. Radwin [link no longer available]
Real Internet Polls
Costa Rica Electronic Voting Trial - CyberTimes article
Absentee voting over the Internet in Florida - Announcement from the Secretary of State - CyberTimes article
Online voting in January 1999 Alaska Republican straw poll - Standard article
Plans for online Democratic primary in Arizona - Votation.com press release
Despite the fact that these appear to be serious efforts at gauging public opinion, at last check the sites below had few if any mechanisms in place for guaranteeing both security and privacy.
August 1996 -- The Reform Party appears to be the first US political party to allow voters to cast their ballots via the Internet (or telephone or postal mail or in person at the convention). However, they make no promises about privacy. According to a party spokesperson, 1.13 million ballots were sent out, and 2500 people attended the convention. Ballots were returned as follows: 43,202 paper ballots (by mail or at convention), 3963 telephone ballots, 2101 Internet ballots. It's interesting to note that most of the ballots were mailed, despite the fact that voters had to supply their own postage! There were toll free numbers for telephone voting, but they were not printed in the voting instructions (they were announced at the convention, on CNN, and in press reports).
InPulse - DEC's online real time polls on the US Presidential and Vice Presidential debates
IPT Interactive Voting Booth - U.S. Presidential poll
Presidential CyberPoll - U.S. Presidential poll
Votelink - polls on global, U.S., and city issues
Alan Keyes for President 1996 Electronic Voting Sites - a list of over a dozen WWW sites that allow you to vote for your favorite Presidential candidate
General Electronic Voting Information
SecurePoll.com - contains a collection of information about Internet voting
The Bell - Safevote Newsletter on Privacy, Security and Technology in Internet Voting
California Internet Voting Task Force Report - January 2000
Examining Internet Voting in Washington - by David M. Elliott, Assistant Director of Elections, State of Washington
Are We Ready for Internet Voting? by Deborah Phillips, The Voting Integrity Project, August 1999
Election Automation -- Types of computerized voting systems - by Lorrie Cranor in ACE Project
Electronic Voting: Computerized polls may save money, protect privacy - by Lorrie Cranor in Crossroads April 1996
Ballot Collection - In Declared-Strategy Voting: An Instrument for Group Decision-Making. Dissertation by Lorrie Cranor. December 1996. An overview of electronic voting, vote-by-mail, vote-by-phone, etc.
The Internet and the Electoral Process - a report from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance
The Business of Elections by Rebecca Mercuri, paper presented at CFP'93
NH State Republican Convention Computerized Voting Standard Resolution - from Risks Digest Volume 7: Issue 81, 21 November 1988
Open Voting Systems by Irwin Mann, paper presented at CFP'93
Overview of Computers and Elections by Eva Waskell, paper presented at CFP'93
WebVoting.org
Risks and Reliability
Security Considerations for Remote Electronic Voting over the Internet - by Avi Rubin
Vulnerability of Computerized Vote-Counting Systems -by Doug Ihde, Minnie Ingersoll, Emily Lewis, and Joe Newsum of Stanford University
Assuring Accuracy, Integrity and Security in National Elections : The Role of the U.S. Congress by Roy G. Saltman, paper presented at CFP'93
California to escrow electronic vote counting software - from Risks Digest Volume 9: Issue 9, 14 August 1989
Computer causes chaos in Brazilian Election - actually, the officials were probably more responsible for the chaos than the computers - from Risks Digest Volume 4: Issue 5, 5 November 1986
Follow-up - from Risks Digest Volume 4: Issue 8, 9 November 1986
Computerized Voting -- No Standards and a Lot of Questions - summary of a talk by Eva Waskell - from Risks Digest Volume 2: Issue 42, 14 April 1986
Decision Threatens Punch-Card Elections - from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch - reprinted in Risks Digest Volume 6: Issue 4, 6 January 1988
Follow-up - from Risks Digest Volume 6: Issue 21, 6 February 1988
Follow-up - from Risks Digest Volume 6: Issue 23, 9 February 1988
Follow-up - from Risks Digest Volume 6: Issue 33, 29 February 1988
Electronic Voting - Evaluating the Threat by Michael Ian Shamos, Ph.D., J.D., paper presented at CFP'93
Use of computers in elections raises security questions - Boston Globe article - reprinted in Risks Digest Volume 3: Issue 42, 25 August 1986
Vote by Phone
Voting by Phone: Empowering the People! - includes a variety of articles, editorials, and case studies about voting by phone including Televote: A New Civic Communication System by Vincent Campbell and Janet Santos, February 1975 [link no longer available]
Voting from home electronically - a variety of view points from Risks Digest Volume 10: Issue 64, 21 November 1990
Follow-up - from Risks Digest Volume 10: Issue 67, 7 December 1990
Follow-up - from Risks Digest Volume 10: Issue 72, 19 December 1990
Follow-up - from Risks Digest Volume 10: Issue 78, 22 January 1991
Follow-up - from Risks Digest Volume 11: Issue 1, 4 February 1991
Follow-up - from Risks Digest Volume 11: Issue 3, 6 February 1991
Vote-by-Phone - Promises and Pitfalls by Roy G. Saltman - from Risks Digest Volume 11: Issue 75, 29 May 1991
Follow-up - from Risks Digest Volume 11: Issue 76, 30 May 1991
Follow-up - from Risks Digest Volume 11: Issue 77, 31 May 1991
Follow-up - from Risks Digest Volume 11: Issue 78, 3 June 1991
Follow-up - from Risks Digest Volume 11: Issue 80, 4 June 1991
Phone voting in NM - from Risks Digest Volume 14: Issue 2, 9 November 1992
Voting by Phone in the Netherlands - also includes a note about the possibility of voting by phone in Chicago - from the Risks Digest Volume 17: Issue 32, 6 September 1995
Vote by Mail
Although this is not directly related to electronic voting, this section is included because it deals with an alternative form of voting that is starting to gain acceptance for governmental elections. Studying the path to acceptance of vote-by-mail may provide insight into how electronic voting may gain acceptance.
"It's a step into the information age; it fits with voters' lifestyles." -- Oregon State Senator Randy Miller
Special Elections: Historical Participation Summary and the Balloting Methods Used from the Oregon Secretary of State Elections Division
Vote by mail - about January 1995 Oregon Senator election - from the Risks Digest Volume 17: Issue 37, 28 September 1995
Democrat wins Oregon Senate seat - CNN, January 31, 1996
Detroit News Editorials Reader Debate: Should state vote by mail? February 10, 1996
Voters Pamphlet, State of Oregon Presidential Primary Election March 12, 1996 - information about Oregon's first-ever vote-by-mail presidential preference primary, includes Q&A about Vote-by-Mail
Oregon Secretary of State Executive Office - includes a variety of vote-by-mail info including contacts, statistics, history, and turnout and cost comparisons
OREGON 1995 SENATORIAL ELECTION: STATISTICAL UPDATE #1 compiled by an academic research team headed by Michael W. Traugott at the University of Michigan's Center for Political Studies
FINAL REPORT SURVEY OF VOTE-BY-MAIL ELECTION IN THE STATE OF OREGON - by Priscilla L. Southwell, Department of Political Science, University of Oregon, April 3, 1996
In some states where vote-by-mail or absentee ballots are optional, candidates, governmental organizations, and others are making ballot applications available over the Internet. You still have to print them out, sign them and return them in person or via postal mail, however.
Electronic Democracy
Interactive Representative Democracy - a new idea on how to combine efficiency, democracy and expertise in governing large organizations with the help of modern information and communication technology
Canadian Direct Democracy
VoteSite.com - web site for an organization that is trying to establish the right to submit digitally-signed petitions in California
Democracies Online - Promoting the development and sustainability of online civic participation and democracy efforts around the world through experience, outreach, and education.
EFF "Electronic Voting & Digital Democracy" Archive
Electronic Democracy Annotated Bibliography compiled by Scott London, 1994 (also see his Kettering Foundaton paper on electronic democracy)
Swiss Direct Democracy
A Blueprint for Real Democracy -- Draft Manifesto of the Movement for Real Democracy -- as best I can tell, Bill Buffam, is the whole movement
The Future of Electronic Democracy by Dan Robinson
Related Issues
Center for Voting and Democracy - information about proportional representation
Proportional Representation Society of Australia
Illinois Citizens for Proportional Representation
Vote by Fax Plan Before [CA] Legislature - from the Risks Digest Volume 11: Issue 9, 14 February 1991
The Sensus protocol assumes the assistance of anonymous Web forwarders. The Anonymizer provides such a service.
GovAccess is an edited mailing list distributed by Jim Warren which deals with issues related to electronic access to government
First European Conference on Voting, Rating, Annotation: Web4Groups & the Future of Communication on the Internet
Surveys are a close cousin of elections. MIT hosted a Workshop on Internet Survey Methodology and Web Demographics in January 1996
Declared-Strategy Voting is a novel group decision-making procedure in which preference is specified using voting strategies
Democracy Evolves! - discusses problems with many traditional voting rules and proposes some new ones; also offers free and for-sale voting simulation software
Voting Systems - The Government's Proposals 31 July 1998 - A research paper that describes the UK Government's proposals for new systems of voting for the European Parliament, the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh National Assembly, the new Northern Ireland Assembly and the Greater London Authority
Voting Integrity Project - a non-partisan coalition formed to protect the integrity of the American elections process
SDR Technologies offers electronic filing systems for government elections and ethics agencies
Electoral Studies - An International Journal on Voting and Electoral Systems and Strategy
Election Information
Election Center - an international service association of election and voter registration officials -- see also their Internet Voting page
The Freedom Channel
The International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES) - a private, nonprofit organization established in 1987 to support electoral and other democratic institutions in emerging, evolving, and experienced democracies
Administration and Cost of Elections (ACE Project) -- an electronic encyclopedia of elections -- see also the ACE Project Electronic Information Resources Index
International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance - an organization whose objective is "to promote and advance sustainable democracy and to improve and consolidate electoral processes world-wide"
Web White and Blue - election information
California Voter Foundation
Federal Election Commission
Vote Smart Web
Florida Divisition of Elections
Leage of Women Voters Non-Partisan Information on Silican Valley's Elections
Voting Equipment and Services Vendors
Safevote.com - "private AND secure Internet voting"
Sequoia-Pacific Voting Equipment
Election.com - "The Global Election Company"
e-lection - "Combining election news, candidate information, pre-election polling, secure online voting, and instananeous election results"
eBallot.net - "offering secure solutions for ballot creation, voting, and tabulation"
Electoral Products - from the ACE Project Website
VoteHere.net - "the secure internet voting company"
Xtol - manufacturer of a "portable wireless keypad system that is used to ask multi-choice questions of groups of people in a variety of training, presentation, surveys and teaching situations"
Global Election Systems - voting equipment and services vendor
Fidlar & Chambers Co. - voting equipment and services vendor
Election Systems & Software - voting equipment and services vendor
Guardian Voting Systems ELECTronic 1242 Voting System - information about an electronic voting booth product
Diversified Dynamics, Inc. - a company that produces "electronic voting systems" and "ballot software"
Microvote - developers of electronic voting tabulation software and distributers of DRE units.
TrueBallot, Inc. Democratic Governance Systems - information about electronic voting booth, vote-by-mail, and vote-by-phone products
Worldwide Election Systems, Inc.
Surveys International - manufactures a patented double-sided, full-face ballot DRE, available through most major systems integrators
Millennium Technology Inc. - "specializes in state of the art, electronic voting systems which are custom designed for corporations and municipal governments"
DRS Data & Research Services plc
Reply Wireless Response Systems - "The Reply family of audience response/voting products is used for small and large group voting"
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Compatibility of voting equipment
and transferable ballots:
overcoming obstacles to electoral system reform
Summary of advice for activists
Activists should push for any of the following systems:
Global's precinct-scanner, the Global Accuvote
Sequoia Pacific or ESS's central-scanning units, the Optech IV-C and the ESS 550
Any new touch-screen system
Each of these systems can handle transferable ballots, but the vendors won't prepare them for the U.S. market until jurisdictions demand them. Electoral system reformers need to generate this demand by winning campaigns and demonstrating that future efforts are likely to be successful. Local conditions should guide decisions among the different types of equipment.
Introduction
Transferable ballot systems such as instant runoff voting (IRV) and choice voting impose two requirements on voting equipment: voters must be able to rank candidates in order of preference, and the voting equipment must be able to store an anonymous record of each voter's ranking. Unlike in a plurality or runoff election, it is not sufficient to store totals for each candidate. On the other hand, the equipment does not have to perform the actual ballot transfers. Commercially available software does this. Cambridge, MA, for example, uses software developed by Jerel Software. Such software reads in the set of rankings, performs the transfers and determines the winner or winners.
Some equipment in use today can already handle transferable ballots, other existing equipment can do it with only software changes, and still other equipment is not compatible with a fully automated transferable ballot system. In the latter cases, there are at least 3 ways of implementing transferable ballot systems with existing equipment in addition to the traditional hand count. Ireland, Australia and Malta all use a hand count for their transferable ballot elections, although Ireland is in the process of acquiring computerized voting equipment.
The trend in voting equipment is away from punch cards, lever machines and push button Direct Recording Equipment (DRE) and toward optical scanners and touch screens. Fortunately for electoral system reformers, optical scanners and touch screens generally can handle transferable ballots while the older systems generally cannot.
There is growing interest in voting by mail and Internet voting, and both of these developments aid efforts at electoral system reform. Oregon switched to vote-by-mail and reduced the cost of administering elections by about $3 million per cycle. Optical scanning is compatible with vote-by-mail while touch screens are not. The extent to which Internet voting will catch on is unclear, but this would clearly be highly compatible with transferable ballots.
Comparing optical scanning and touch screen systems
Although optical scanning and touch screens are generally compatible with transferable ballots, each has its advantages and disadvantages. Optical scanners are generally cheaper than touch screens, can be used for precinct scanning or centralized scanning, can be used for absentee ballots and vote-by-mail, and leave a paper trail. The disadvantage of optical scanners is that the software for recording rankings has not been written for some of the equipment. Until a jurisdiction signs a contract with a vendor, it is unclear how much the software to handle transferable ballots will cost. One optical scanner (the Global Accuvote) is already in use in the United States for transferable ballot elections, and two other companies are bidding to supply a central-scanning unit to London, which will use a transferable ballot system to elect its next mayor. These technologies are essentially proven, although the Global system in use runs on a platform (Unix) that Global is no longer supporting. New Global equipment runs on a Windows platform.
Touch screen systems generally cost more than optical scanners and cannot be used for absentee voting or vote-by-mail. They store each voter's choices, so they are fully compatible with transferable ballots, although some software may need to be written for some of the systems to allow voters to rank candidates. Touch screen systems are ideal for multi-lingual jurisdictions. Just like an ATM, with a touch of the screen, the equipment can switch to the language of the voter's choice.
Vendors
Global Election Services (Global), Sequoia Pacific (Sequoia) and Election Systems & Software (ESS) control a large portion of the US market for new election equipment. Each supplies optical scanning and touch screen equipment. Global supplies the optical scanners that Cambridge MA uses for its transferable ballot elections. Active internationally, Sequoia and ESS have bid to supply central-scanning units in London, which will a transferable ballot in upcoming elections.
The touch screen equipment is just coming online. In California the Secretary of State has certified two touch screen system, and these have been used in a some demonstration elections. Sequoia's machine, the AVC Edge, will likely cost around $3,500, not including support. Sequoia has developed the software for ranking ballots, whereas Global and ESS apparently have not. If jurisdictions can afford to acquire touch screen equipment, electoral system reformers should encourage them. The one drawback is their incompatibility with absentee voting and vote-by-mail, but this can be handled with a small number of optical scanners.
Optical scanners
Global Accuvote: This precinct-scanning machine is probably the most compatible voting equipment in use today. It costs under $5,000. Cambridge MA uses the Accuvote for its elections, and the State of Alaska recently acquired new Accuvote machines. The Accuvote can read 32 columns of voting marks, and this allows the voter to rank many candidates. Cambridge has a statutory requirement that voters be able to rank at least 15 candidates.
The Global Accuvote system that Cambridge uses runs on a Unix platform, which the company is no longer supporting. New Accuvote equipment runs on a Windows NT system. The company has estimated a cost of $250,000 to port the transferable ballot software from Unix to Windows. It is not known if this estimate will come down or if several jurisdictions could share the cost, although both are possible and have been discussed with the company.
Sequoia Pacific Optech IV-C and the ESS 550: These machines are descendants from the central-scanning machine originally developed by Business Records Corporation (BRC), which the government broke up as a result of complex litigation. These machines are similar central-scanning units that cost around $50,000 and can scan 20,000 ballots per hour. Both Sequoia and ESS are bidding to supply these machines to London, which will use the Supplemental Vote, the form of IRV in which voters can only rank 2 choices. Because of these bids, we believe that these machines can be considered "off-the-shelf" technology for transferable ballots. These machines only read 4 columns of voting marks, which limits the number of candidates that voters can rank.
Sequoia Pacific Optech Eagle and the ESS 100: These machines are precinct scanners that descended from a common machine made by BRC. Neither company appears to be developing transferable ballot systems with these machines, but representatives of both companies have indicated that they would only require software and memory changes, not hardware or engineering. This remains to be proven. These machines also only read voting marks in 4 columns. This limits the design of the ballot and the number of candidates that voters can rank. It would be difficult to rank more than 3 candidates.
Conclusion
The only equipment now used for transferable ballots in the United States runs on a platform that the company is no longer supporting. The company has estimated that it will cost $250,000 to switch its system from Unix to Windows. New equipment from Global runs on Windows. This equipment can read 32 columns of marks on the ballot and is the most suited to designing ballots on which voters can rank candidates. It is also a precinct-scanner, which gives jurisdictions maximum flexibility for scanning, absentee ballots and vote-by-mail. Resolving the question of the operating system is the chief issue here. Otherwise, the equipment is highly recommended.
Sequoia and ESS both supply central-scanning units that are or will soon be compatible with transferable ballots. These units are larger than some jurisdictions need, and we do not know how many columns of voting marks it can read. This may limit the number of candidates that voters can rank.
Sequoia and ESS also supply precinct scanners, but they do not appear to be developing the software for transferable ballots for these machines.
We believe all of the new touch screen systems coming out will be highly compatible with transferable ballots. They generally cost more than optical scanners, and they are not compatible with absentee ballots and voting by mail, but they should be able to handle transferable ballots easily.
Electoral system reforms should promote the Global's precinct-scanning unit, the Global Accuvote; central scanning units from Sequoia and ESS; and touch screen systems.
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This page was last updated on 08/23/2000 14:54:48
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Copyright 2000 The Center for Voting and Democracy
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