Protecting your vote
by Ronald L. Rivest
Boston Globe, The Podium, April 3, 2012

http://articles.boston.com/2012-04-03/opinion/31273394_1_audit-election-results-voting-machine-audit-trail

Sometimes, a few votes make a huge difference.

Just ask Rick Santorum. In January, Rick Santorum won the Iowa
caucuses, but, because of vote counting and tabulation errors, Mitt
Romney was declared the winner. In the two weeks before the error
became clear, Romney's campaign gained momentum, while Santorum's
withered.

Unfortunately, the same problem -- or worse -- could easily occur in
Massachusetts. This year, voters will choose the president, and
control of the US Senate may come down to the race shaping up between
Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren.

How will voters know their votes will be counted accurately?
Massachusetts voters cast paper ballots. This is a good foundation for
an election system, since the paper ballots form an "audit trail" that
can be examined (and if necessary, recounted). In almost all cities
and towns in the state, those ballots are slid into machines that read
the ballots and total up all the votes at each polling place. The
machines are reprogrammed for every election, but only 50 to 75
ballots are used to check the new programming, even though 1,000
ballots or more are likely to be put into each voting machine on
Election Day. Votes from each location are then brought together and
tabulated. In both steps of the process, there is the possibility of
significant error.

As a technologist, I have spent decades working with information
systems and computer programs, and can say one thing with certainty:
mistakes can happen. In banking, business, and engineering, similar
problems often arise, and they are solved elegantly: with random
testing. The IRS does not take every tax return on faith -- it audits a
small number of them. These audits uncover errors and fraud, and serve
as deterrent. Athletes are randomly tested for performance-enhancing
drugs. Factories pull random samples of their products off the
production line and conduct quality control checks. Municipalities
send inspectors to gas stations to make sure that when the meter says
you have pumped a gallon, there actually is a gallon of gas in your
tank.

Audits and random tests are used anytime there are numbers involved
and a lot at stake. And what could be more important than the
elections we use to choose our government's leaders?

Twenty-six states have election audits and that number is
growing. After an election, the state selects a few random polling
places to count the ballots by hand. The hand-counted totals are
compared to machine results. If the numbers are close enough, there is
confidence that any errors or mis-programming sufficient to have
affected the election outcome will be discovered. Because only a few
random polling locations are audited, costs are kept low. Many people
are surprised to learn that we don't audit election results here in
Massachusetts.

There need not be any big conspiracies or widespread failures to make
audits worthwhile. Voting machines are just like any other
machine. Sometimes they break. In Waterville, Maine, voting machine
malfunctions caused a Senate candidate to receive 27,000 votes -- about
16,000 more than the number of registered voters in the entire
district. In Barry County, Michigan, flawed programming caused
incorrect results. The problem was discovered only when a county clerk
received the results from the precinct where he voted and noticed that
the candidate for whom he voted for had received no votes.

In addition to providing security and confidence, audits provide
information. Information that election officials can use to make sure
every person's vote is counted. Audits can uncover common voter
mistakes that could be fixed with, for example, better
instructions. Audits can tell election officials if a ballot has been
poorly designed in a way many voters cannot understand, so that future
ballots can be designed better.

Let's make 2012 the year where all Massachusetts voters have
confidence that their vote will be counted. There is audit legislation
pending in the Legislature. Lawmakers should pass it in time for the
November election. Elections matter. And every vote counts.

Ronald L. Rivest is a professor of computer science at MIT. He is a
founder of RSA Data Security.