Election
Tuesday was a very long day for me. It started at 5:15 AM, and I was out the door at 10 until 6, and I didn't get home until around 10 after 10 PM that night. The reason for the long day was because I was working as an election judge. The election judges are the people who run the polling places on election day.
Setup went fairly smoothly, and when the polls opened at 7 AM, we had probably 20 people waiting in line. Voters had a choice of either paper ballots or electronic voting machines. We had 4 voting booths for the paper ballots, and 1 electronic voting booth. I started off as the machine judge. The morning rush finally cleared out around 9 AM, and we had a steady trickle of voters from then until the polls closed at 7 PM, including a small rush just before the polls closed, delaying some of the cleanup slightly. As I was one of the two judges of a party different than the supply judge, I ended up being the return judge, accompanying her, the votes and material back to the return center. For us, the answer to the question from a TV commercial of "What's riding on your tires?" was "The essene of democracy," in the form of 203 paper ballots, 60 electronic ballots, and 4 provisional ballots.
The particular electronic hardware we used was the Hartford Intercivic eSlate. This particular system consists of a main console, called a JBC and one or more eSlate booths. Rather than the usual touch screen electronic booths, voting is accomplished using a dial and select switch combination, similar to the scroll wheel interface on an iPod (though a different design). Attached to the eSlate is a device known as a VBO printer. This device is used to generate a paper trail of how the votes were cast. In addition, the votes are stored on a memory card in the eSlate and on a memory card in the JBC.
As a software developer, I know what can go wrong with the code we write. I also know how easy it would be to inject malicious code that would cause votes to be mistallied. A related problem that probably needs to be solved is the question of how to verify that the version of software being used for a particular piece of hardware is in fact the version that's supposed to be used. It isn't possible just to rely on the version number that a program claims to be, as that output is nothing but a string coded into the program. One that could be spoofed by any malicious program.
Setup went fairly smoothly, and when the polls opened at 7 AM, we had probably 20 people waiting in line. Voters had a choice of either paper ballots or electronic voting machines. We had 4 voting booths for the paper ballots, and 1 electronic voting booth. I started off as the machine judge. The morning rush finally cleared out around 9 AM, and we had a steady trickle of voters from then until the polls closed at 7 PM, including a small rush just before the polls closed, delaying some of the cleanup slightly. As I was one of the two judges of a party different than the supply judge, I ended up being the return judge, accompanying her, the votes and material back to the return center. For us, the answer to the question from a TV commercial of "What's riding on your tires?" was "The essene of democracy," in the form of 203 paper ballots, 60 electronic ballots, and 4 provisional ballots.
The particular electronic hardware we used was the Hartford Intercivic eSlate. This particular system consists of a main console, called a JBC and one or more eSlate booths. Rather than the usual touch screen electronic booths, voting is accomplished using a dial and select switch combination, similar to the scroll wheel interface on an iPod (though a different design). Attached to the eSlate is a device known as a VBO printer. This device is used to generate a paper trail of how the votes were cast. In addition, the votes are stored on a memory card in the eSlate and on a memory card in the JBC.
As a software developer, I know what can go wrong with the code we write. I also know how easy it would be to inject malicious code that would cause votes to be mistallied. A related problem that probably needs to be solved is the question of how to verify that the version of software being used for a particular piece of hardware is in fact the version that's supposed to be used. It isn't possible just to rely on the version number that a program claims to be, as that output is nothing but a string coded into the program. One that could be spoofed by any malicious program.