JedFonner.com

So I voted this morning at my local polling place (conveniently located right next door to me) as part of the Potomac Primary. I was in and out in 10 minutes, which was awesome, but overall I’m still a kind of worried that my vote won’t actually get counted.

My concern comes from the apparent lack of security around the digital voting process. Now, in fairness, I’m not very worried, but just a teeny bit worried. It’s kind of like when you check your luggage at the airport and realize you left your keys in your checked bag - the whole flight home you’re a teeny bit worried that the bag will be lost and you’ll be stranded at the airport. That’s kind of how I feel about my vote.

Just to explain how it worked this morning when I voted electronically:

• I was given the choice whether to use paper or electronic, and I chose electronic (so I only have myself to blame)
• I was given a little smartcard and told to go use the electronic voting machine
• At the machine, I entered my card and selected my candidate
• After confirming I had picked the right candidate, the machine spit back out the card so I could return it. I was not offered a paper receipt of my vote.
• I walked back and handed the card to the polling official
• Here’s where it got weird: she thanked me and dropped my card into a pile of 6 or so other cards

That’s it. My vote was not counted right away as far as I can tell. It looks like each card can hold a bunch of votes, so they re-use them until they’re full or until voting is closed. I assume they’re only tallied at the end of the day. As it currently works, anyone could walk out with the smartcard, taking everyone else’s votes on that smartcard with them. Or the smartcards could be misplaced or “lost”, nullifying all those votes. If I was really paranoid, I’d be afraid of a sophisticated hacker actually reading and changing the votes on the smartcard with a modified off-the-shelf smartcard reader.

Everyone who voted with paper was instructed to feed their paper ballot into the automated vote counting machine right after they marked their choice. At least with that machine the votes were counted and stored someplace semi-secure, not just in a pile on drafting table.

I would have preferred that my electronic vote be counted as soon as I returned it and then the card erased before the next person used it. And of course, I was very disappointed that I was not given any kind of paper trail of my e-vote.

Seeing as how it doesn’t save much time to vote electronic (in fact, you have to wade through like four confirmation screens), you can bet that I’ll be voting on paper in November.

UPDATE Feb 13:
I have to admit I might have jumped the gun on this one. One of Nicole’s friends told me that my vote is saved on the actual machine, not on the card. After reading about the equipment on the DC Board of Elections Voter Equipment page, it seems very likely that this is the case. But I still would have liked a receipt or paper trail of some kind.