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| Mr. Bismark during his talk. Photo: TED |
Since
1990 TED has held conferences in different cities of the United States to
address an array of topics related to Technology, Entertainment and Design. Using
a rather informal setting, guest speakers present ideas and demonstrate their
expertise in presentations lasting 18 minutes at most.
In
July, 2010, David
Bismark attended TED to present a system he designed along with some
colleagues, to guarantee transparent and verifiable elections. According to
Bismark, the problem his e-voting system addresses is the difficulty each voter
encounters to know that his/her vote was recorded accurately and that it
actually counted correctly, while remaining anonymous.
This
new system relies on the use of a Precinct Count Optical Scanner machine to
capture the intention of the voter. What is innovative about it is the design
and particularities of the printed ballot it uses. Voters receive a ballot in
which candidates are on the left side, and the ovals/square to mark the preference
and a 2D encryption bar are on the right side. Once the voter marks his option,
he/she proceeds to tear the ballot through the middle. The right part of the
ballot, where options are marked, is scanned and then returned to the voter to
keep as a registry of the vote. Now, not all ballots are the same. Candidates
are randomly organized in the left side of the ballots, so once the ballot is
divided into two separate pieces, nobody can tell for which candidate the
marked vote is related to.
Although
the system is quite inventive, it does not address many of the issues that are
important in a electronic voting system. From the moment the voter arrives to
the precinct, to the moment results are announced, an election involves 7 main
steps: Authentication of the voter, activation of the voting session, voting,
counting of the votes, results collection, consolidation and proclamation.
During
Bismark's presentation, he failed to mention any special mechanisms to address
security in the results collection, consolidation and proclamation processes. If
in fact, his system has solved security issues in those steps, the
authentication and session activation are still manual processes prompt to
suffer human error, be it involuntary or intentional.
Also,
by utilizing PCOS, the voter cannot be completely sure the vote was properly
accounted for. As opposed to machines that directly record the vote, a scanner
works as an interpreter. Interpreters open the possibility for error.
One
last inconvenience we see in this system is the fact that ballot printing is
one of the most onerous costs for electoral commissions. Printing different
models of ballots so that the right side of the ballot cannot be associated to
any candidate, once separated into two, represents a heavy burden for the finances
of the elections commissions.
