Paul Krugman on the perils of electronic voting this November

[BlueScreen]

From today's LA Times:

Fear of Fraud

By PAUL KRUGMAN


It's election night, and early returns suggest trouble for the incumbent. Then, mysteriously, the vote count stops and observers from the challenger's campaign see employees of a voting-machine company, one wearing a badge that identifies him as a county official, typing instructions at computers with access to the vote-tabulating software.

When the count resumes, the incumbent pulls ahead. The challenger demands an investigation. But there are no ballots to recount, and election officials allied with the incumbent refuse to release data that could shed light on whether there was tampering with the electronic records.

This isn't a paranoid fantasy. It's a true account of a recent election in Riverside County, Calif., reported by Andrew Gumbel of the British newspaper The Independent. Mr. Gumbel's full-length report, printed in Los Angeles City Beat, makes hair-raising reading not just because it reinforces concerns about touch-screen voting, but also because it shows how easily officials can stonewall after a suspect election.

(full editorial at: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/27/opinion/27krug.html?th)

Free registration required.

[papau]

1. Coming soon to the US - as our US Media refuses to say anything.

And they wonder why folks call them media whores.

:-)

[tom_paine]

2. KICK for Krugman!

:kick:

[Brotherjohn]

3. Then there's this from today's NYTimes...

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/28/politics/campaign/28vote.final.html?hp

"Almost all the electronic records from the first widespread use of touch-screen voting in Miami-Dade County have been lost..."

As the Chairwoman from a citizen's group says, "Florida is headed toward being the next Florida."

[ochazuke]

4. Should we prepare for a fraud-scenario?

Maybe we DUers should start talking about a general strike or other mass protest to back up the measures that will be taken by the Kerry campaign in the event of another Florida.

[DubyaSux]

5. Geez...we must really be stupid...

I read every Krugman article and 99% of the time, couldn't agree with him more.

This subject, however, makes all of us look like morons. The bulk of what he says has been repeated by both Bev Harris and Avi Rubin. Rubin went on to serve as a poll worker and stated very clearly he was wrong on many things in his report (you know which report. The one where he working for VoteHere.com, a Diebold competitor).

Rubin went on to learn something and Harris got more stupid. She's in this for the money and there's no money in not scaring the crap out of people.

But what blows my mind with my fellow democrats here on DU, is how utterly stupid we're made out to be by these idiots and we believe it.

They seem to think that the people involved in some supposed HUGE conspiracy, along multiple evoting companies, can't be discovered by democrats working in the same system.

In other words, we're just too damn stupid to figure out some repug is trying to rig an election. This is ridiculous. The country is fairly well split down the middle between the democrats and republicans, so my bet anybody's workplace is basically the same.

This means, that roughly half of any evoting manufacturer's employees are democrat. But from what I read here sometimes, every single one of them is too stupid to figure out this conspiracy.

The facts are simple. Not ONE vote has ever been miscounted by evoting equipment. Not even one. Every problem has been caused by humans. And we pretend to think these same mistakes don't happen with paper ballot voting.

Secondly, I happen to beleive demnocrats are smarter than republicans. So, if an election can be rigged, why would it always be in favor of a republican? Or are you going to convince yourself that every democrat in existence is too honorable for that behavior?

Evoting is necessary to accuratly count all the votes and allow people with disabilities or limitations vote with dignity. Bev Harris is single-handedly trying to screw this up so she can rake in the cash.

With evoting, you can try to coerce highly skilled people to throw an election. With paper ballot voting, my 5 year old daughter could do it. Who do you think is easier to get?

Are there problems with evoting? Of course. Are there problems with paper ballots? Far, far more...

[eridani]

15. Maybe you don't care if voting software allows negative votes--

--but I damned well do. This is outrageous, like being able to vote pi or the square root of two. Have you ever wondered why all the fluffy bunny stories about how secure e-voting is come from people who are not computer experts, whereas all the naysaying is from people who are world-class experts on computer security?

[Must_B_Free]

17. "in it for the money" has some problems

1. she pledged to donate all proceeds to her non profit
2. there is a good reason to put cheese on the hook - to get something to happen. It gets lawyers to do work.

Compared to all the infighting this topic produced I am tending to agree with her action. Time to shit or get off the pot instead of falling apart from within. The PR objectives have been acheived here, its time to go to the next stage.

[struggle4progress]

6. Down for the Count

Issue Number 55 - 06-24-04
by Andrew Gumbel

.. Buster was running at about 47 per cent .. with Soubirous at 37 percent and a third candidate, Kevin Pape, at 15. But then .. strange things started to happen .... Soubirous’s campaign manager, Brian Floyd, received a call from an election observer in Temecula informing him that the vote count had been stopped .... Floyd and another Soubirous campaigner .. jumped into a car .. to Townsend’s office to investigate .... But then they noticed two men huddled at one of the vote tabulation computers. One .. was typing away on the computer keyboard .... The two men turned out to be employees of Sequoia Voting Systems .... Cassel and Floyd said the man at the keyboard, a Sequoia vice president called Mike Frontera, was wearing a county employees’ ID badge – something that has not been adequately explained .... When Floyd confronted Registrar Townsend directly, she denied that the vote count had been halted. But at 9:10, according to Cassel’s account, something .. changed because county employees piled back into the counting area, and results from the outstanding precincts began to be posted shortly afterward .... Over the next few days, as the totals from absentee and mail-in ballots were added, the margin shrunk down to .. 45 votes .... On March 4, Floyd and Cassel saw the second Sequoia employee, Eddie Campbell, return to the registrar’s office and watched him pop into his pocket what looked like a PCMCIA card similar to those used to store votes on individual touchscreen machines .... Floyd shouted out: “Where are you going with that?” But he received no answer .... According to Cassel, Campbell began moving from terminal to terminal – as though .. having difficulty being accepted by whatever system he was trying to enter. Floyd, meanwhile, was anxious for an explanation and tried to track down Mischelle Townsend. It took him all day to find her, and when he did she at first said that Eddie Campbell was not authorized to be in the system and then .. changed her tune and said he was ....
<much more>

http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=1013&IssueNum=55

Long and frightening article. Should make every friend of democracy question electronic voting machines.

[DubyaSux]

7. Well, as usual...

...we ignore BOTH sides of the story.

And what does this story have in common with the other crap we hear about evoting?

Bev Harris and MONEY!!

Go figger..

Apparently, there is so much more to the story, that Sequoia is going to pursue legal action to set this story straight. Here's straight off Looney Toone's website
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/answers-riverside.htm

She is grasping at straws at trying to find the evil republicans altering votes while the innocent democrats are either too stupid or incompetent to do anything about it. The LA Times caught her in a lie, and apparently threatening to sue them, they backed off and issued a correction. At least she said she did. But if she said the sun was coming up tomorrow, I'd be calling a priest over to give me my last rites. There is very little Bev Harris has not lied about (including her very own lawsuit).

Technicians were on site to help transfer data. They do not have user names and passwords. But Harris, true to form, starts ranting how someone witnessed (of course, nobody else did) a technician using someone else's id and password.

As if there's a C++ compiler on the evoting machine and they can start making new source code.

So, what started this story? A lawsuit of course...Bev Harris wants more of your money. It may not be her suit, but it'll make her money no matter what happens with it.

[struggle4progress]

9. Hmm. Gumbel's story doesn't even mention Bev Harris.

Did you even read Gumbel's story?

And welcome to DU ... :hi:

[DubyaSux]

11. Of course I did...

....read Gumbel's story. And thus my point.

You get to the bottom of any evoting hysteria episode, and you will find Bev Harris's name.

Harris claims Soubirous campaign officials told her about the possible impropriety in an interview she conducted during the filming of a "voting issue" documentary in Riverside. The LA Times quoted Harris saying she was present. The only thing not debated about this episode is that Harris has jumped in the middle of it "demanding" answers that she post on her website for a small donation.

My problem with Bev Harris is that she's getting in the way of getting accurate votes. No more pregnant hanging chads. No undervotes. No overvotes. Multi-lingual. Helps the disabled vote with dignity. I thought these were democratic values.

Her premise that elections can be rigged is based on democrats being stupid and/or incompetent. I find this insulting and fail to see how any democrat wouldn't be. She has many believing that republicans in several different companies from the CEO down to the technician to the poll worker can rig an election without a democrat finding out and putting a stop to it. She'll have you believe in the world's largest and most perfect conspiracy. She'll have you believe the republicans are so smart, we're powerless to stop them.

There is not one, not even ONE incident that can be found where the machines didn't vote correctly. Recounts CAN be done (contrary to what some may believe), random audits - from ALL parties - are performed from manufacture through election day (and they ARE tested in election day mode - another internet myth debunked) and there has NEVER been a problem found. 100% of problems found were due to human error.

Avi Rubin, her partner in crime, spent a day as a poll worker in Baltimore, Maryland. He stated unequivocally, that almost everything he feared with poll workers could not realistically happen. But he was concerned about the numbers inside. And back to my point. This type of conspiracy is too absurd for words. Because not everyone is a republican. It's that simple.

I don't want another 4 years of Bush because some people have problems like the people in Florida did last time. We hear about Florida, but this happened ALL over the US. Undervotes, overvotes, and ballots not correctly punched. How many elderly that don't want their Medicaire and other benefits stolen by a Republican don't go out to vote because they have trouble with punch card ballots? Maybe they can't them too well...shake too much...don't understand...etc. EVoting solves this problem and gets more people voting.

If Gore would have had all the votes counted, he would have won and we wouldn't be in Iraq. But he chose 4 counties and relied on the judgment of teams of people with personal interests in the election. That's why the recounting stopped and as much as I hate to say it, it should have. The standards WERE different from district to district (pregnant chad ok in one district, but not another).

But instead, we'll be talking about chads again, finding more bags of ballots stuffed in people's trunks, and recounts with different results every time they do it.

I hope Sequoia does take legal action so we can see BOTH sides of this story clearly. I want Bush out. And paper balloting is not our best option to get that done.

[struggle4progress]

13. Most of what you claim can be shown wrong without much difficulty

Since you make a number of claims, and I have limited time, I won't attempt a complete refutation, but will merely try to provide enough representative links to show that e-voting concerns are not the singular obsession of Bev Harris and that the concerns Harris raises are not evidence of hysteria but actually originate in comments of technical experts. Following these links further would probably dispose of all your accusations. Otherwise, a few more minutes with a search engine would suffice.

You can ridicule Aviel Rubin as Bev Harris's "partner in crime" and sneer that he "spent a day as a poll worker in Baltimore." But in fact he's a professor in the Department of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins, Technical Director of their Information Security Institute, and a specialist in network security, applied cryptography, at privacy technology, which actually well qualifies him to discuss issues such as the reliability and security of these little electronic "voting machines."
http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~rubin/

Rubin also belonged to the expert group that studied the possible internet voting for overseas voters:

<snip>
DRE (direct recording electronic) voting systems have been widely criticized elsewhere for various deficiencies and security vulnerabilities: that their software is totally closed and proprietary; that the software undergoes insufficient scrutiny during qualification and certification; that they are especially vulnerable to various forms of insider (programmer) attacks; and that DREs have no voter-verified audit trails (paper or otherwise) that could largely circumvent these problems and improve voter confidence. All of these criticisms, which we endorse, apply directly to SERVE as well.

But in addition, because SERVE is an Internet- and PC-based system, it has numerous other fundamental security problems that leave it vulnerable to a variety of well-known cyber attacks (insider attacks, denial of service attacks, spoofing, automated vote buying, viral attacks on voter PCs, etc.), any one of which could be catastrophic.

Such attacks could occur on a large scale, and could be launched by anyone from a disaffected lone individual to a well-financed enemy agency outside the reach of U.S. law. These attacks could result in large-scale, selective voter disenfranchisement, and/or privacy violation, and/or vote buying and selling, and/or vote switching even to the extent of reversing the outcome of many elections at once, including the presidential election. With care in the design, some of the attacks could succeed and yet go completely undetected. Even if detected and neutralized, such attacks could have a devastating effect on public confidence in elections.
<snip>
http://servesecurityreport.org/

An pdf of those author's bios is available at the link: all the authors have specialized (doctoral level) technical expertise. Note that they consider "lone wolf" attacks might be as damaging as organized attacks.


Here's the BBC coverage of that report:

Pentagon e-voting plan 'flawed'
Thursday, 22 January, 2004, 12:54 GMT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3419775.stm


... Computer scientists like David Jefferson of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have warned for the past few years of the dangers of electronic voting. Specifically, Jefferson said software bugs could cause problems that would have no way of being solved without a paper trail ... http://www.smdailyjournal.org/article.cfm?archiveDate=10-07-03&storyID=25935


... an extended, free-wheeling interview .. with three .. Rebecca Mercuri, Barbara Simons, and David Dill
http://truthout.org/docs_03/102003A.shtml


Electronic voting riles League of Women Voters
Friday, June 11, 2004
... Some say the League of Women Voters' support of paperless systems has lulled politicians into thinking the machines are reliable ... Barbara Simons, 63, past president of the Association for Computing Machinery, is running for league president on a paper trail platform. The league's endorsement is out of touch with younger, computer-savvy voters who "know computers are risky," she said ...
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/06/11/league.electronicvoti.ap/


Barbara Simons was President of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) from July 1998 until June 2000 and Secretary of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents in 1999. ACM is the oldest and largest educational and technical computer society in the world, with about 75,000 members internationally. In 1993 Simons founded ACM’s US Public Policy Committee (USACM), which she currently co-chairs. She earned her Ph.D. in computer science from U.C. Berkeley in 1981; her dissertation solved a major open problem in scheduling theory. In 1980 she became a Research Staff Member at IBM's San Jose Research Center (now Almaden). In 1992 she joined IBM's Applications Development Technology Institute as a Senior Programmer and subsequently served as Senior Technology Advisor for IBM Global Services. Her main areas of research have been compiler optimization, algorithm analysis and design, and scheduling theory. Her work on clock synchronization won an IBM Research Division Award. She holds several patents and has authored or co-authored a book and numerous technical papers. Recently, Simons has been teaching technology policy at Stanford University.
http://www.acm.org/usacm/Committee/Simons.htm


Stanford Report, Feb. 18, 2004
Electronic voting unreliable without receipt, expert says
BY STEPHANIE CHASTEEN
<snip>
Stanford computer science Professor David Dill says that the man behind the curtain should show you the ballot. He uses this metaphor to illustrate his grievance with completely paperless electronic voting machines, such as touch-screen machines.

"If the machine silently loses or changes the vote, the voter has no clue that that has happened," says Dill. He argues that electronic voting machines should print a paper copy of the ballot, which the voter can inspect and which can be used in the event of a recount. Dill made the case for this "voter-verifiable paper audit trail" in a Feb. 15 symposium on voting technology at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

While many, including Dill, think that optically scanned ballots are the cheapest and most reliable method of collecting votes, there has been a rush to invest in electronic voting machines instead.
<snip>

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2004/february18/aaas-dillsr-218.html


Testimony by Rebecca Mercuri, Ph.D.
Presented to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science
Subcommittee on Environment, Technology, & Standards
Tuesday, May 22, 2001, Room 2318, Rayburn House Office Building

<snip>
For the last decade, I have investigated voting systems, with particular emphasis on electronic equipment (hardware and software) used to collect and tabulate ballots. Through this research, I have identified numerous flaws inherent to the application of computer technology to the democratic process of elections. These flaws are both technologically and sociologically based, so a quick (or even long-term) fix is not readily apparent. For example, present and proposed computer-based solutions are not able to resolve (and in some cases even increase) the likelihood of vote-selling, coersion, monitoring, disenfranchisement, and fraud in the election process.

<snip>
To date, no electronic voting system has been certified to even the lowest level of the U.S. government or international computer security standards (such as the ISO Common Criteria or its predecessor, TCSEC/ITSEC), nor has any been required to comply with such. No voting system vendor has voluntarily complied with these standards (although voluntary compliance occurs within other industries, such as health care and banking), despite the fact that most have been made aware of their existence and utility in secure product development. There are also no required standards for voting displays, so computer ballots can be constructed to give advantage to some candidates over others.
<snip>

In conclusion, I would like to remind the Committee that technology can not and does not, at present, provide a solution to the balloting and tabulation problem. Our society has become increasingly enamored with computers, yet we all have experienced, first-hand, their (sometimes catastrophic) failures in products we use every day. The same is true for computer-based voting systems, but here, there are no warranties and insurance provided if we have problems with the results. It is therefore crucial that we continue to maintain and impose human checks and balances throughout our election process. This is the only way to insure that our democracy does not become one that is by the machines, of the machines and for the machines. Thank you.
http://www.house.gov/science/full/may22/mercuri.htm


Electronic Voting
Rebecca Mercuri
The contents of this webpage are Copyright ©2000, 2001, 2002 by Rebecca Mercuri.

In the rush to correct problems exposed by the 2000 Presidential election debacle in Florida, many municipalities were pressured or required to procure new voting systems. The most vulnerable of these systems are the fully electronic touch-screen or kiosk (DRE) devices because of their lack of an independent, voter-verified audit trail. The vendors and certifying authorities have taken a "trust us" stance, claiming that the machines are "fail-safe" and that the internal record and tally constitutes an accurate reflection of the ballots cast on the machine. In fact, machines have failed in actual use, not only displaying choices that were not selected by the voters, but also by mis-recording votes (in some cases losing them entirely, or shifting them to other candidates). Some of the machines enter a lock-down mode at the end of the balloting session, where it is impossible to later check that votes could be cast properly for each candidate or issue. Vendors have tied the hands of election officials and independent examiners by protecting their systems under restrictive trade-secret agreements, making it a felony to inspect the operation of the machines without a comprehensive court order. The articles linked below in my writings section provide an illustration of the magnitude of these problems. My analyses are based on computer science and engineering facts, and are not politically motivated. Please read these materials carefully and contact me if you should require further clarification or assistance.
<snip>
http://mainline.brynmawr.edu/~rmercuri/notable/evote.html

[BlueScreen]

10. Would you care to expound upon your comments?

Well, it appears that you have some problem with the work of Bev Harris. Permit me to suggest that coming in here with both guns blazing against a person whose commitment serves as an inspiration to many of us comes across as a bit hostile.

You claim that she is only pursuing her work for the money; do you have any specific arguments to support this? I was not aware there was much money to be made in writing a book and then putting it on the Internet as a free download to any who might want it.

Cheers,
Sagar

[DubyaSux]

12. Certainly...

She's starting to make money off the lawsuits now. This seems to be profiting off the back of hysteria to me..

http://www.detnews.com/2004/technology/0407/14/technology-208992.htm

Bev Harris is a snake of the worst kind. She'd put Bush back in office if it'd get her more publicity/money.

[struggle4progress]

14. Whether you like Bev is irrelevant. She's not the source of the concerns.

[teryang]

8. without the ability to do recounts

...the vote is whatever the machines say it is. And we all know how "secure" the digital world is.

[DubyaSux]

16. More hysteria...

Avi Rubin made many claims in the report he wrote WHILE HE WAS WORKING FOR VOTEHERE.COM, a Diebold competitor. The intellectual dishonesty shown here amazes me here. We would not stand for a conflict of interest this big with a repug, but you ignore it when it affects us.

Avi Rubin, as with Bev Harris, leave out the controls surrounding the process to make their case and that claim is patently false. Again, without any process controls, an 8 year old could rig an election with paper ballots.

Democrats from executives on down to the poll worker would not stand by and watch an election be rigged. Hell, most repugs probably wouldn't simply because they do not want to be involved in a felony of this magnitude. We are not stupid or incompetent. Rubin, Harris, and the laundry list of "experts" claims are based on democrats being too stupid to keep an election from getting rigged.

ES&S studied Maryland and stated on the record, that there was no way some stuff Rubin claimed could happen and further stated that Rubin could have no idea how the election process worked. And guess what? They were right! Rubin had never step foot inside the actual election process before he wrote his report and admitted it. So, Rubin volunteered as poll worker in Maryland to see what really happens and stated he was WRONG about the process and many of things he was concerned about could NOT happen (as ES&S stated).

And to set the record straight, no machine is connected to the internet. There is a dial-up connection to transfer results to a dedicated terminal that is not accessible by outside equipment. That connection is more secure than a VPN because there is only one connection between two pieces of equipment.

If Bev Harris was sincere about her actions, she would be trying to part of the solution - not the problem. I would love for people like her to be part of a watchdog group that keeps the process running as perfectly as possible.

But that's not what's she's doing. She's trying to get evoting pulled out of the process instead of trying to help make it succeed. She is playing democrats for fools because she knows our hearts are in the right place and republicans DO suck.

And if this election is as close as the last one, Bush could be put back in office because of dimpled chads. You should EMBRACE technology that has the best chance of booting Bush.

So, if Bev Harris is paying attention (I know she comes here), please answer this question:
How would republicans from 3 different evoting companies hide a grand conspiracy from the democrats they work with to the point that they could rig any election at will? Is there some secret handshake to see "who's in" so out of the thousands of people involved (CEO, executives, technicians, election officials, poll workers, etc), not even ONE comes forward as a whistleblower and not ONE has claimed they were solicited into conspiring to throw an election?

And this is aside from the fact that no claim made by either Harris or Rubin had anything to do with the equipment or software. There is no record whatsoever of the machines not be counted properly. It hasn't happened. And that is a FACT no matter what they tell you.

There have been problems, but they have been problems caused by poll workers - not the machines. These are the same mistakes they are making with paper ballots.

[struggle4progress]

18. Rubin NEVER worked for VoteHere:

The following was released by JHU Office of News and Information.

Statement of Avi Rubin on Relationship with VoteHere Inc.
August 17, 2003

<snip>
People in my position, established computer scientists, are often asked onto technical advisory boards of companies. I have been involved in many of these and currently serve on the advisory boards of Gilian Technologies, Netscaler Inc, Bodymedia Inc, Arbor Networks, Indigo Technologies and Reefedge. In addition to these, I am on the advisory board of VoteHere Inc.

Had I considered my relationship with VoteHere, I would have disclosed it at the time that the report on the Diebold software was released. However, I had not had any contact with VoteHere since I signed on to their board over two years ago, and I simply did not remember nor think about it. In hindsight, that is very unfortunate. I should mention that my research on the Diebold code was not funded by any corporate support, and to the extent that it was funded at all, it was internal Johns Hopkins funding.

Effective immediately, I am resigning from the technical advisory board of VoteHere, and I am returning all stock options. They have never been exercised and are not entirely vested. I have never profited in any way from my affiliation with VoteHere, and by returning my stock options in their entirety, it is assured that I never will.

Everyone in the field is aware that I come to the issue of e-voting as a strong skeptic about whether there is any viability in it. I am known for suggesting that there are very difficult problems for any company to overcome, and I have not in any public or private forum suggested that any company is closer to resolving those very difficult problems than any other.
<snip>

http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/home03/aug03/votehere.htm


I don't understand how, if you think Rubin's minimal ties to VoteHere completely disqualify his opinions, you would (in good faith) cite a report by Election Systems & Software as definitive, since ES&S certainly has a profit interest in a particular outcome. But if you don't like Rubin as a source, there are, as I indicated in my post #13 above (with supporting links), plenty of other well-qualified computer science experts who raise the same concern.

Again, you make many claims, but provide no evidence to substatiate any of them.

[DubyaSux]

19. My mistake. It was SAIC

My mistake. It was actually the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). Not ES&S. Maryland commissioned them to review the Diebold Election Systems before their election. They stated, without mincing words, that Rubin could not possibly have any idea of what really happens in an election. Rubin did not deny that. In fact, he volunteered to serve at a poll to find out. AFTER HE WROTE THE REPORT.

You call it minimal interest - I call it a conflict of interest. How do you "forget" you are on a technical advisory board of a competitor and held stock options in the company? Puleeze...

[struggle4progress]

20. Again, I say that none of the issues depend on Rubin ...

... and note you seem to select carefully the potential conflicts-of-interest that concern you.

The Baltimore Sun October 26, 2003
Uncle Sam keeps SAIC on call for top tasks
Government turns to California company for variety of sensitive jobs
By Scott Shane

<snip>
SAIC's record is not perfect: Iraqis and international organizations have accused SAIC of bungling a Pentagon contract to set up new Iraqi media, and the Maryland voting machine contract has been clouded by allegations of a conflict of interest.
<snip>

SAIC's web of connections has haunted contracts to analyze electronic voting machines in Maryland and Ohio. In Maryland, legislators seek a review of SAIC's assessment of Diebold machines that Johns Hopkins researchers say might be vulnerable to hackers or vote-tampering. They mention several issues - SAIC and Diebold share a lobbyist, both companies are part of an industry group that is trying to improve the image of electronic voting, and a former SAIC president, retired Adm. William A. Owens, serves on the board of a Diebold rival.

In Ohio, the secretary of state replaced SAIC as its contractor for studying Diebold machines after learning that SAIC had promised a $5 million investment to a company that owns part of a competing voting-machine maker.
<snip>

http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2003/031026-saic-tasks.htm

[BlueScreen]

22. Your argument just doesn't wash

The article you cited is interesting in that it lists a number of serious concerns with electronic voting machines. The only part that even remotely backs your assertions against Bev Harris is the following:

They are asking California to join the lawsuit against Diebold. The state has not yet made a decision.

State election officials have spent at least $8 million on paperless touchscreen machines. Alameda County, for one, has spent at least $11 million.

Under the whistleblower statute, March and Harris could collect up to 30 percent of any reimbursement.

In other words, a victory against Diebold by the State of California could potentially result in a financial gain for Harris.

Now, let me get this straight-- because Bev Harris' personal activism and work on this issue might lead to a personal profit, that activism and work is therefore invalidated? And she is (to use your words) "a snake"?

Perhaps you would prefer that private citizens were disallowed from receiving whistleblower fees. I am curious-- did you campaign against the legislation which created the whistleblower program in California? I believe the reason that it rewards people for coming forward is so that--imagine!-- people will come forward. It provides an economic incentive for people to increase the public good.

As for your personal smear against Ms. Harris, I can only suggest (as a newcomer to this group) that adopting a more mature way of expressing yourself might lend you an increased sense of credibility. Hard to take someone seriously who engages in puerile name-calling.

[PATRICK]

23. Obscures again the main problems

by criticizing the critics and blaming poll workers, dumb voters and honest politicians(the victims).

Diebold is boldly and counterintuitively(if it WAS honest!) opposing any transparency or auditability or accountability for its multitude of gaffes, violations, breakdowns and insufficiencies. Their fixes are put offs and put downs and fundamental insecurity is the ONLY thing they are protecting. Multiple excuses at the end of the day is a prime element of their product- along with vaporized ballots.

They will always put the burden on the poll worker to be the fall guy which is what I see in abundance in Dubyasux' post.

Behind any of these glitzy, glitching machines(I include the demonic punch card invention) lies terrible reasoning and assumptions. The main point obscured is the need to regulate and ensure a fair and accurate count and recount and a rational accessible ballot. Keep changing software and sidestepping state accountability is the old shell game of those who intend to cheat, who can only only survive by cheating, and who make a lot of money out of that because democracy is obviously not in their black bag of values.

Rubin did not claim more than he experienced or knew. He is still a fairly innocent guy who will not let wicked possibilities born out by history plague his imagination. He only sees the obvious. Most unfortunately cannot even see that.

Namely the premise that a privately owned software code will record and store ballots is inherently dangerous and dependent solely on the good will and incorruptibility of a very few- instead of legions of common poll volunteers. One is cosmically perilous. The other is messy and fraught with mistakes and minor fraud(and since all the population comes out with their vague and varied ideas to vote there is a just correspondence there that sort of balances out).

Harris and Rubin are simply trying to fix the fait accompli of the newest modern absurdity, e-voting, and rely on external evidence. Diebold trusts its machines. Whatever Diebold actually is trying to "fix" we should wait for November to see? Like in the Florida Primary? Like in California?

When someone ends by disparaging poll workers and paper ballots to sell Diebold it only makes sense if you are a Diebold salesman or a satisfied client. Fraud can only be ended by honest government assuring accountability and redress and a fair and open system. That has little to do with convenience, speed and recruiting third party robotic arbiters.

[struggle4progress]

21. Optical Scanners are currently the best option:

you get the convenience of electronic counting, but you also get a paper trail that can be used to validate the machine counts and to use if there's a dispute. And they're more accurate than the black boxes:


Touchscreen voting problems in Fla.
Machines performed worse than optical scanners
The Associated Press
Updated: 8:46 p.m. ET July 11, 2004

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Touchscreen voting machines didn’t perform as well as devices that scanned paper ballots in this year’s Florida Democratic presidential primary, raising questions about the state’s voting process for the November election, a newspaper reported Sunday.

An analysis of just under half of the ballots from the March 9 election shows that votes were not recorded for about one out of every 100 people using the new machines, or a 1.09 percent rate of undervotes, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported. An undervote is when a selection cannot be detected on a ballot.

That’s at least eight times the number of undervotes in the same election on paper ballots marked with pencils and tallied by an optical scanner, which had a 0.12 percent rate of undervotes, the newspaper reported.

Undervotes were a problem in the contested 2000 presidential election, in which many Floridians cast their ballots on punch-card machines. After 36 days of legal wrangling and recounts, George W. Bush won Florida, and thus the White House, by just 537 votes.
<snip>

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5417439/

[PATRICK]

24. At least optical scanners

are seen as one tool and not swallowing the whole process into digital purgatory. Fascination with a tool should not obscure the scandalous lack of rechecking on an automatic and orderly basis in all locales. Convenience and helps are not in themselves adding to security and without checks and trails are merely making the possibility of fraud more massive and convenient.

The history and origins of all voting aids seems to me to be proper material for a serious grand Jury investigation, but we could solve the problem without having to put some violators away first. Prevention is a dire necessity now. No one has any way of redressing the possible damage done and more future damage may put cheaters firmly in control.

[struggle4progress]

25. Regular random recounts wouldn't be a bad idea.

I agree that failure to do any post-election checking is a scandal.