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A new election looms but the problems persist. Allah be praised, Floridians still can’t keep themselves out of the limelight in spite of tons of late night show jabs and all the hurricane batterings. But this time, in Broward County where the early voting began, the machines crashed and not surprisingly, most of the crashes seemed to occur in Democratic precincts. Eric Weiner posits that all the extra bells and whistles in exorbitantly priced voting machines complicate a simple process. In true Mies Van de Rohe spirit, less is more. I don’t understand the reasons why an electronic voting machine would be saddled with “Windows operating systems, encryption, touch screens, backup servers, voice-guidance systems, modems, PCMCIA storage cards, etc” supported with millions of lines of code. Little more customization and I could check my email and update my blog from the voting machines. In India, a simple contraption works great and although it resembles the Anshuman kit that I used to program Assembly language in, does its job remarkably well. In addition, it has passed the test of weathering the grueling Indian democracy monolith in action. It was heartening to see Rajdeep Sardesai on CNN yesterday telling Americans that if they wanted to outsource anything, it should be these simplistic machines. But “outsourcing of their democracy” is not going to go down well with the American public. Open source enthusiasts might be bothered that the source code of that garage prototype is known only to a few election officials but as long as we don’t have to deal with the likes of Diebold Systems and Advanced Voting Systems, clearly partisan interests, I am happy.
Most of us love to cram our computers with applications that we “might use sometime”, handle an assortment of remotes to program our TV, VCR, DVD player, stereo, cable, TiVO among other things. Americans feel a sense of incompleteness if they don’t go over the top with technology. Add to it, the fear of accountability and security, it makes a higgledy piggledy mess in an otherwise simple process of pushing a couple of buttons.
Technology was supposed to make life easier but it is not happening anytime soon; at least on this side of the Atlantic.
by Patrix | on Tuesday, October 26th, 2004 at 11:05 pm | 
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October 27th, 2004 at 12:07 am reply
So, iP, do I get 42 cents today ?!
If I remember correctly from the reviews I read post-elections, the May elections with the new EVMs were quite a succes in Indian standards. Over 1 million EVMs were used for an electorate of over 600 million, covering more than 500 parliamnetary constituencies. Considering the large numbers, the glitches were few and manageable.
Dr Mercuri from Bryn Mawr College calims that no electronic voting system has been certified to even the lowest level of US Govt or international computer security standards such as the ISO criteria, nor are they required to comply with such standards…
Check it out…
October 27th, 2004 at 12:50 am reply
Good post!
October 27th, 2004 at 12:53 am reply
Ash - You sure have an Adsense of your own going here, racking up the cents :)
The link you provided did offer quite an exhaustive list of references for e-voting. But the fundamental difference between India and America’s technologies is, for better or for worse, the need to make systems as fool-proof as possible and easy to use for a diverse group of people. But when they add all the bells and whistles, they end up with something too complicated for even a geek to comprehend…why can’t they make it as simple as a ATM?
Wings - Thanks. No more thoughts?
October 27th, 2004 at 7:09 am reply
heres a comment from an american…….” i might as well be voting in guatemala- i press a button and thats it- i don’t even get a receipt………for all i know that vote didn’t even get registered……..”……of course i might add that you actually vote on a gazillion issues - covered in 13 pages……..many of which you may have no clue about………..so you just go ahead and randomly click on choices- this too is true- heard it from another friend of mine……………
October 27th, 2004 at 8:41 am reply
gulp! this sure is a long long read… me thinks me shall come back on the morrow and read it, until then… well nothing, the sentence just seemed incomplete without something further to say…
October 27th, 2004 at 11:20 am reply
oy! true true how very true. how typical of america to hav their on big shotness cum back n bite em in the ass. well the analogies concerning americans n biharis were very true indeed, altho i sumhow think one group is stupider than the other (take a guess). hope nothi goes drastically wron this nove,ber 2nd or well have to wait another 4 years for a shred of sanity in amreeeka.
October 27th, 2004 at 2:48 pm reply
M - sounds more like an multiple choice test. Making your vote count and counted are some of the issues that bother american today. But disenfranchisement (whew!) is a common complaint among all nations that vote. My parents were knocked off the voters list last summer for unexplained reasons and so were many of the ppl they knew…no surprise that the candidate least expected to win finally won.
Toinks - This is a long read????? you are losing it or have your browser font size too large? :) come back soon.
Ankita - Bigger they are, harder they fall. They should just let us handle the technology part of their elections. Republicans, naturally oppose any such thing and for a good reason too.
October 27th, 2004 at 7:49 pm reply
what do you think of the latest….58000 absentee ballots have gone undelivered……voters are livid………this in broward county- a county that gave Al Gore 67% of their votes……….and you think a single vote counts?????????
they are already talking about criminal investigations……but meantime- voting will be over and the winner will be declared………….
October 27th, 2004 at 8:07 pm reply
M - All those hurricances and you Floridians still don’t understand that God is royally pissed. Don’t make me come down there…find those votes quick.
October 27th, 2004 at 8:12 pm reply
Well said. The EVMs were a huge success in India .. with the relative low percentage of screwups being the key. It has surprised me too - that the big US of A cannot come up with a more workable, simple system to register votes. Moreover, me thinks more noises should have been made over the limitations and faults of the current versions.
October 27th, 2004 at 8:16 pm reply
Anya - Its the result of dominance of vested interests that gives you $600 coffee makers. Diebold Systems has contributed enough funds to the Republican coffers to wield influence for bids on the machines.