FairVote Feed: Democracy Innovations

Internet voting: If ever made secure, would it improve election turnout?

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 11:01:49 -0700

The phenomenon is not new but has become worrisome by its recurrence. Voter turnout is appallingly low. This year's city elections in the United States remind us that voters are turning out in smaller numbers each year in most local elections and most primary elections.. With the advent of new technological means of communication, however, will technology be a means to fight against the disaffection toward politics that so many Americans seem to feel?

When asked for ideas on how to boost turnout, young people frequently suggest internet voting. That’s hardly a surprise, given the role in their lives and how often it is now used for student elections and votes at online sites like Facebook and Youtube. Indeed the nation of Estonia arranged for voting on the internet in 2005. In this post I explore the stakes around this new technology, and whether the United States is even remotely close to implementing it for governmental elections.

The example of Estonia: Does Internet voting affect voter turnout?

Experts recognized that the effect of "e-voting" on the electoral turnout was not proved in the Estonian elections or in any other internet elections so far. Nevertheless, e-voting has many supporters. “With the vote on internet, you can vote wherever you are and when you want ", said the Professor Rüdiger Grimm of the University of Coblence. “Although we have no proof, it has to increase electoral turnout”.

The Estonian example does suggest a positive impact on turnout. Since 2005, the citizens can vote on internet in the general and European election. To vote, a person would first obtain an electronic ID card. Such cards come in many forms, and even a recent phone’s SIM card is acceptable. Next, a voter obtains two secret codes, the first one to be identified in the voting system, and the second one to sign electrically.

Between 2005 and 2011, percentage of internet voting has risen from 2 % to more than 24 % of the total number of votes cast. Participation in the European elections at the same time has jumped up from 27 % in 2004 to 43 % in 2009. In light of these positive statistics, why do experts hesitate to support e-voting in the United States?

Theoretical advantages, but practical problems

The ptotential advantages of e-voting are easy to identify. As the “peak of the modernization of the administrative processes”, it decreases the costs of holding an election and makes it easier for internet users, particularly young people, to carry out the duty of citizenship. Besides, a lot of people already make purchases, manage their bank accounts or communicate with the public authorities on internet, and are familiar with how the internet functions as a tool for everyday life. Why not include voting?

The reasons to hesitate are nevertheless strong, and without further evidence, convincing. The electronic vote is by definition different from the e-commerce because it touches a fundamental value,:democracy. The fear of manipulated elections is very present, transparency and safety are unverifiable, and questions about how guarantee ballot secrecy with absolute certainty are the main problem. The most important is the question of how to guarantee the reliability of the system: that the “system will in all situations function in the manner in which it is meant to function."

Underscoring the point, the District of Columbia in October 2010 conducted a pilot project to test an internet based voting system that would give overseas and military voters a way to download and submit absentee ballots online. Before using the system in a real voting process, the public was invited to evaluate its security and usability.

Alex Halderman, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan, and his team of two students in 36 hours found a vulnerability of the system and exploited it. It gave them almost total control of the server software, including the ability to change votes and reveal voters’ secret ballots. In 36 hours, his team hacked the D.C Internet Voting Pilot, and it was unnoticed until they revealed themselves in a prank: the University of Michigan fight song would play after a voter hit “cast ballot”.

Based on this experience and other results from the public tests, the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics has announced that they will not proceed with a live deployment of electronic ballot return at this time, though they plan to continue to develop the system. For now its voters will still be able to download and print ballots to return by mail.

This experience shows us how much this voting system can be dangerous. Even if it brings a lot of theoretical advantages, e-voting remains unreliable. Even as we follow the evolution of internet voting systems, iwe must listen to the skepticism of the experts. Halderman, for example, suggests that he can’t imagine any current system being secure from would-be hackers. That conclusion won’t stop new experiments in internet voting, however - nor young people suggesting it as a good idea. But we clearly are not ready today in the United States.

Spotlighting a Best Practice

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 11:22:49 -0700

The day FairVote decided to vote on lunch

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 14:10:48 -0700

Tuesday lunch is a well-established tradition at the FairVote office here in Takoma Park. Each Tuesday, FairVote buys lunch for its employees, and it’s a perfect time for informal discussion and debate. Today was actually my last one, since my internship ends at the end of the week, but that is not my point.

Today, we could not decide on what to order and realizing that we are the voting system experts, we thought it would be great to cast votes before making any decision. So here were our candidates: Chinese food, Middle Eastern food and Pizza. Only one of them could win.

The main issue was: which system should we use, so that we get fair results? Different systems can indeed get different winners and this was a great opportunity to test their fairness and impact.

	IRV	Range Voting (rate from 0 to 10)	First-Past- The-Post	Top-two Runoff	Condorcet Method
Neal	1- Pizza 2- Chinese 3- Middle Eastern	Pizza: 10 Chinese: 0 Middle Eastern: 0	Pizza	Chinese	Pizza vs. Chinese: Pizza Pizza vs. Middle Eastern: Middle Eastern Middle Eastern vs. Chinese: Chinese
Adam	1- Chinese 2- Middle Eastern 3- Pizza	Pizza: 0 Chinese: 10 Middle Eastern: 0	Chinese	Chinese
Pauline	1- Middle Eastern 2- Pizza 3- Chinese	Pizza: 7 Chinese: 0 Middle Eastern: 10	Middle Eastern	Middle Eastern
Rob	1- Middle Eastern 2- Pizza 3- Chinese	Pizza: 5 Chinese: 0 Middle Eastern: 10	Middle Eastern	Middle Eastern
Amy	1- Chinese 2- / 3- /	Pizza: 0 Chinese: 10 Middle Eastern: 0	Chinese	Chinese
Winner	Chinese Food	Pizza	Tied Between Chinese Food and Middle Eastern	Chinese Food	No winner: tied

Because we were only five voters, the potential for tied results was high. And, even if there are different methods to decide who the winner should be in the case of tied results (based on the age of the candidate, or on a runoff between the top two candidates for instance), I thought that it would be more interesting to keep them tied, as a testimony of how split our votes were today.

In the case of the traditional system of first-past-the post, voters chose one candidate and the one with the most votes won. No choice received a majority of the vote, which means that resolving the tie results would not make a majority of the voters happy about the results. In either case (Chinese Food or Middle Eastern winning), 60% of the voters did not choose that possibility, which does not seem fair.

In the case of a top-two runoff, Neal was the tiebreaker: his first choice was out of the game, so he had the opportunity to refine his preference by choosing between Chinese food and Middle Eastern food. In that system, one choice had to win a majority of the vote, which seems pretty fair.

Then we had instant-runoff-voting (IRV), where voters ranked their choices according to their preferences. In the first round, Chinese Food and Middle Eastern Food both received two votes, and Pizza one vote. No choice got a majority, so Pizza was eliminated because it had the fewest votes. However, since Neal had expressed a preference by putting Chinese food as his second choice, the instant runoff determined that Chinese food now had three votes and Middle Eastern food, two. Consequently, Chinese food won a majority of the vote and was declared the winner.

Another method that we thought to use was range voting. With that method, voters had the possibility to score each of the candidates from 0 to 10. We added up the scores and the candidate with the most votes, Pizza, won. This system is worthy of note, because it enables voters to have a strategy: if you really want your candidate to win, you have an incentive to give him/her the maximum score and to give the minimum score the others. It is also interesting to see that Pizza won in that case: it was the preferred candidate of only one voter, but a good compromise candidate. However, Adam and Amy obviously both voted strategically, which makes it a bad system to use: we cannot make sure that people will vote sincerely.

Finally, the Condorcet method ended up with tied results. However, it is an interesting way of electing someone, since the winner would be the candidate whom voters prefer to the other candidates, when compared to them one at a time. This means that the winner would be the most preferred candidate overall, compared to the one being the first preference of most of the voters. This is a way to get the best compromise candidate.

So, there is obviously no right result, rather results that make a majority of voters happy or not. We went with instant-runoff-voting because we are convinced that it is the fairest system, were happy with Chinese Food and had a great Tuesday lunch!

Municipal Right to Vote Action Plan

Thu, 04 May 2006 00:00:00 -0700

Because Americans treasure the right to vote, they often are surprised by a shocking fact: the Constitution does not affirm the right to vote. As a result, there are virtually no federal election administration standards, and there is mass disenfranchisement at each election. Yet the history of voting rights in America since 1787 is one of general, if irregular, progress toward universal franchise. The Municipal Right to Vote Initiative seeks substantive reform at the local level while detailing a plan to take America's voting rights to their logical conclusion: an affirmative, federally protected right to vote.

FairVote Feed: Democracy Innovations

Internet voting: If ever made secure, would it improve election turnout?

Spotlighting a Best Practice

The day FairVote decided to vote on lunch

IRV

Range Voting(rate from 0 to 10)

First-Past-The-Post

Top-two Runoff

Condorcet Method

Neal

Adam

Pauline

Rob

Amy

Winner

Chinese Food

Pizza

Tied Between Chinese Food and Middle Eastern

Chinese Food

No winner: tied

Municipal Right to Vote Action Plan

Range Voting
(rate from 0 to 10)

First-Past-
The-Post

Top-two
Runoff

Tied Between
Chinese Food
and Middle Eastern