Electronic Elections: The Perils and Promises of Digital Democracy [Hardcover]

R. Michael Alvarez (Author), Thad E. Hall (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 3, 2008 | ISBN-10: 0691125171 | ISBN-13: 978-0691125176

Since the 2000 presidential election, the United States has been embroiled in debates about electronic voting. Critics say the new technologies invite tampering and fraud. Advocates say they enhance the accuracy of vote counts and make casting ballots easier--and ultimately foster greater political participation. Electronic Elections cuts through the media spin to assess the advantages and risks associated with different ways of casting ballots--and shows how e-voting can be the future of American democracy.

Elections by nature are fraught with risk. Michael Alvarez and Thad Hall fully examine the range of past methods and the new technologies that have been created to try to minimize risk and accurately reflect the will of voters. Drawing upon a wealth of new data on how different kinds of electronic voting machines have performed in recent elections nationwide, they evaluate the security issues that have been the subject of so much media attention, and examine the impacts the new computer-based solutions is having on voter participation. Alvarez and Hall explain why the benefits of e-voting can outweigh the challenges, and they argue that media coverage of the new technologies has emphasized their problems while virtually ignoring their enormous potential for empowering more citizens to vote. The authors also offer ways to improve voting technologies and to develop more effective means of implementing and evaluating these systems.

Electronic Elections makes a case for how e-voting can work in the United States, showing why making it work right is essential to the future vibrancy of the democratic process.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Electronic Elections summarizes insights [the authors] have gleaned from their extensive experience. The book is meant to instigate scientifically informed election administration. The authors argue for a comparative approach to risk management that considers the costs and benefits of alternative methods. . . . A thoughtful early contribution to a new field of election science. -- Walter R. Mebane Jr., Science



Will the machine lose your vote? Will it be hacked? Political scientists Alvarez and Hall provide a rigorous analysis of electronic voting, and they come down heavily in favor of the benefits of the new technologies, arguing that media coverage has emphasized the problems while downplaying the potential for empowering more citizens to vote. -- Michelle Press, Scientific American

From the Inside Flap

"Recent debates about voting technology and election reform have generated more heat than light, often leading to myopic views of security and premature policy fixes. Alvarez and Hall provide a constructive alternative--a calm, rational, data-tested, risk-based analysis of electronic voting. Their book is a model of how rigorous research can constructively inform public discussion and the policy process."--Thomas E. Mann, Brookings Institution

"This is a very important book. It will undoubtedly be cited by technologists, legislators, and advocates. The authors, carefully navigating in a politically charged field, present a documented and balanced approach to the question of electronic voting. About 70 percent of eligible Americans vote. Each of them is potentially affected by this book. There has never been a study like this one."--Michael Shamos, Carnegie Mellon University

"This book addresses a timely and important topic in election reform. The conclusions of the authors are that electronic voting systems, when evaluated correctly using risk analysis, pose fewer issues than digital scan or paper balloting systems, but that public debate has been unfortunately sidetracked into issues of fraud. This is one of the first books on this topic."--Paul Gronke, Reed College

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (March 3, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691125171
• ISBN-13: 978-0691125176
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,950,338 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars not worth reading, November 13, 2010

By 

Chris Bystroff (Troy, NY, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Electronic Elections: The Perils and Promises of Digital Democracy (Paperback)

This book, purporting to assess the risks of electronic voting technology, has neatly avoided or glossed over the most serious security issues. For example, no mention is made of the demonstrated "back door" hack attacks that succeeded in reprogramming central tabulator machines. The book completely ignored congressional testimony by computer programmer Clint Curtis, who admitted writing software to rig elections. It ignored the body of work produced by Bev Harris & co at Black Box Voting, showing weaknesses in the system from the machines themselves to the chain of custody of the vote to the public access to vote counting. It glossed over the exit poll discrepancies of 2004, incorrectly implying the discrepancies were uncorrelated with the use of electronic voting machines. In fact, the discrepancies were indeed correlated with electronic voting. The book reads like an info-mercial on behalf of Diebold!

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Check out the numbers; check out the facts, March 8, 2009

By 

Anders Johnson (San Jose, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Electronic Elections: The Perils and Promises of Digital Democracy (Hardcover)

If you have cause to be informed of issues surrounding present-day voting systems, then this book is certainly worthy of your attention, but you might want to take it with a grain of salt.

It correctly and importantly observes that concerns over the security of electronic voting systems have often caused us to embrace less secure options. In fact, although error and fraud are possible with any system, there is nothing in the data so far to suggest that electronic systems have suffered from a higher incidence of error and fraud than paper-based systems, nor is there reason to believe that the data is skewed. Nonetheless, I completed this book still in agreement with Alvarez's and Hall's critics (David Jefferson, et al.) that given time, attackers will inevitably develop the technology to make electronic voting increasingly vulnerable to undetectable outcome-changing fraud.

Speaking of security, the authors claim that we could effectively solve that problem by addressing secrecy and voter auditability simultaneously. But then, after dropping some tantalizing hints about cryptographic systems which achieve exactly that, such systems are practically excluded from the discussion. (The interested reader should search Wikipedia for "E2E".)

Critics of electronic voting will be disappointed to find that many of their arguments, in particular the argument that citizen involvement can make hand-counted paper ballots a non-black-box system, are not addressed head-on. To understand why such arguments do not withstand scrutiny, we have to turn to other sources[...].

But on the whole, the public would indeed be better served if this debate, which has been framed in terms of ideology and preconceived policy solutions, were instead focused on optimizing performance and risk, as we find here.