BBV: Support Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, CA, for mandating v-vpb

[RedEagle]

Kevin Shelley, California Secretary of State, received over 6,000 requests when he asked for input on voter-verified paper ballots.

Shelley listened,mandated California to require paper ballots, and now we should thank him and tell him to stand his ground, we are all there with him.

This man is doing the right thing by his state and by his country.

Tell him how much you appreciate him and thank him for not taking the easy way out:

www.ss.ca.gov

916-653-6814

[e-mail]

1500 11th St.
Sacramento, CA 95814

I've just called and will follow up with both email and letter. His office should be filled with support for the measures he is taking.

After all, we now know from the Diebold memos the extent of lobbying to prevent voter-verifiable paper ballots, and how legislators,
"...just don't understand...we must not be paying our lobbyists enough."

This is NOT a lobby issue. This is a democracy issue. Will your vote be counted as cast or not, and can you, an average citizen, not a cryptography expert, prove that your ballot is correct?

You have a right to see that vote on a permanent medium and insure it is correct. A computer simulation is not a ballot! Even the CRS report called it a "representation."

Nothing else matters if our vote doesn't count correctly.

[RedEagle]

1. If Someone Does What You Want, It's Important To Tell Him That

Kick!

[RedEagle]

2. Let me know who has written to Shelley

Kick!

[Andromeda]

40. Just wrote to Shelley and it came back

as undeliverable. What's up with that?

[genius]

52. HE'S NOT SUPPORTING IT FOR 2004. CHECK WHAT YOU SUPPORT

He wants one for 2006. By then the Rethuglicans will own America and it'll be too late. His commission could have asked for one in 2004. It chose not to. Demand a voter-verifiable paper trail for 2004.

[althecat]

3. Kick

[proud patriot]

4. Done n/t

[RedEagle]

5. C'mon guys

If they do what you want, you THANK them!

[mountebank]

6. Definitely will write.

Already sent off a couple e-mails to Mischelle Townsend and Connie McCormack, voting registrars of Riverside and Los Angeles Co., who were very critical of Shelley's actions in an L.A. Times piece on his decision.....

I'll definitely be writing Shelley to thank him.

Researching and writing him the original letter was what brought me to the BBV issue and DU!

[RedEagle]

7. Thanks Mountebank

CC those letters to some of the big California newspapers too.

Kick!

[Eloriel]

8. It's especially important since some of the various

county election officials are gearing up for a fight on this issue. Of course, that's likely to be settled in the courts, but still a nice boost of positive strokes to his in-box couldn't hurt.

Eloriel

[Zhade]

9. WARNING! WARNING! Danger, Will Robinson, danger!

THE PROPOSED SOLUTION IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

Here is the complete text of the announcement (as it is public interest, I do not think there is any problem with reprinting it in full):

KS03:106
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Terri M.Carbaugh
Friday, November 21, 2003 Doug Stone
916-653-6575
Secretary of State Kevin Shelley Announces Directives
To Ensure Voter Confidence in Electronic Systems
Beginning July 1, 2005, All Touch Screen Systems Purchased Must Have a Paper Audit Trail

SAN FRANCISCO --- Secretary of State Kevin Shelley today announced that beginning July 1, 2005, no county or city may purchase a touch screen voting system that does not include an accessible voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT). As of July 2006, all touch screen voting systems used in California, regardless of when they were purchased, must have a VVPAT that can be used by all voters, including the visually impaired, to verify that their preferences are accurately recorded.

In making the announcement, Secretary of State Shelley said that a transition period is necessary in order to assure the fair and efficient conduct of elections in California.

“The schedule I have set forth for implementing a VVPAT will ensure that there is adequate time for new voting systems to be properly certified. This also allows time to train elections officials and poll workers and to educate voters,” he said.

To further enhance voter confidence in new technologies, Secretary Shelley is adopting voting system reforms and new electronic certification procedures. Shelley will also call upon the federal government to substantially improve its testing process.

“As the state progresses with new technology, all Californians must have confidence that every vote cast is a vote counted,” said Secretary of State Kevin Shelley. “These new requirements will provide this confidence.”

In addition to providing for a VVPAT, Shelley’s reforms call for additional requirements for software testing and auditing, new security protocols for manufacturers, random field testing on Election Day to ensure proper performance of individual voting machines, and the creation of a state Technical Oversight Committee.

In February 2003, Shelley convened an Ad Hoc Touch Screen Task Force composed of computer experts, members of the public, and representatives of the disabled community and election officials to make recommendations to increase the security of voting equipment software. The task force issued a series of recommendations for Shelley’s consideration.

A complete copy of Secretary Shelley’s directives and the recommendations of the Ad Hoc Touch Screen Task Force are available on the Secretary of State’s website, at http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/touchscreen.htm.

VOTER-VERIFIED PAPER BALLOT.

Not "audit trail".

Not "receipt".

Not "verifIABLE".

Not "AuditABLE".

[Zhade]

11. Okay - am I a thread-killer or something?

I'm not trying to be pessimistic, but I remember very clearly the "weasel words" warning from Bev and other BBVers, and I am extremely concerned about this almost-victory.

VERY concerned.

Am I totally alone in this?

[BevHarris]

12. You are not alone, Zhade. This measure was not enough, but

we sure as hell don't want it rolled back. Remember, we are dealing with opponents who think of a recall election as a political strategy, and as soon as this (thoroughly inadequate, but at least heading in the right direction) decision was passed, the troops on the other side were marshalled to try to get it rolled back.

Therefore, do let him know your support.

Bev

[Zhade]

13. How should I express that support?

I mean, I'm going to have to point out that his proposal, while a big step in the right direction, is not yet good enough. Talk about a delicate balancing act!

[BevHarris]

14. Woh. A little more care, people, I just dug this up.

Important question: Exactly who is on this task force?

Check out this news article. There is a possibility we are being played on this. Imagine this setup: Kevin Shelley announced for a voter verifiable system. Predictable but somewhat overheated outcry arises, especially from counties with Sequoia (i.e. Riverside) (Sequoia Voting Systems is talking about an alliance with VoteHere, to use a cryptography system that they also call a voter verifiable trail.) What VoteHere has is something unacceptable. VoteHere, heavily tied to the defense industry and with relationships to Dr. David Dill and previous ties to Avi Rubin, wants to sell us a system where we get a receipt that has a code number on it that we verify -- this is in NO WAY a proper audit.

Okay, so I just found this article, showing that Sec'y of State Shelley was looking at VoteHere as long ago as July. Is my take on this -- meaning, we'd better be damn cautious -- the same as yours?

Touch-screen machines need verification system

Mercury News Editorial
11 July 2003
San Jose Mercury News

California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley will soon determine whether Santa Clara County voters can have confidence in new touch-screen voting machines.

At issue is the question of whether you'll be able to verify that when you touched George Bush's name on the screen it actually recorded a vote for George Bush. The only method now available to do that is a printout, like a slip you get from an automated teller machine, that voters would look at before confirming their choices. Shelley should instruct Santa Clara and other counties to include these or other voter verification features in any touch-screen systems they use.

A task force on voting security that Shelley appointed broadly endorsed that concept. Its recommendation -- released last week -- marked a major shift in thinking, considering that six months ago, county election officials and state bureaucrats dismissed as alarmist the notion that touch screen systems could be tampered with or corrupted. If adopted, a voter verification requirement would be a national first.

But the task force left the specifics unresolved. It left it to Shelley to decide when and in what form the extra security should be required.

The majority of members, primarily county and state election officials, would give voting machine manufacturers 3 1/2 years to perfect the security features before mandating them for new systems, and 6 1/2 years, until 2010 before requiring current systems to be retrofitted. That's far too long to leave voting systems without verification protections.

The task force members point to significant but surmountable obstacles to using a printout for verification, such as making it adaptable to the blind. Instead, they put faith in a high-tech voter verification system that sounds promising but doesn't exist yet. (One company, VoteHere, plans to make its system public soon.)

...All the more reason to encourage Shelley to move forward with a voter-verifiable paper or electronic audit sooner than later.

---------------------------

I think this task force includes Dr. Dill and Kim Alexander.

Let me state uncategorically here: I am 100% against the VoteHere solution, as it fails one of the most basic tests for preserving democracy, and that is making sure the counting of the vote is controlled by THE PEOPLE, and not controlled by a handful of cryptographers with ties to defense contractors, nor to a handful of computer programmers, as it is with electronic voting.

Bev Harris
http://www.blackboxvoting.org

[Zhade]

15. It could be Shelley who's getting played here.

The guy seems to check out so far, although there is something in the back of my mind that bothered me at some point. Can't recall what, though...

Interesting to note from his official SoS bio:

He wrote Proposition 41, to give California counties funds for newer, more accurate voting systems. This law became the model for the Help America Vote Act, recently passed by Congress.

Is Shelley getting taken for a ride? More if I discover anything.

[Andy_Stephenson]

17. Perhaps I will call him on Monday.

Yes...I think I will do that.

[Zhade]

16. Here's the member list for the Ad Hoc Touch Screen Task Force

Mark Kyle, Undersecretary of State (Chair)
Marc Carrel, Assistant Secretary of State for Policy & Planning (Co-Chair)
Kim Alexander, Founder and President of the California Voter Foundation
David Dill, Professor of Computer Science, Stanford University
David Jefferson, Computer Scientist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Robert Naegele, President, Granite Creek Technology, Inc.
Shawn Casey O’Brien, former Executive Director, Unique People’s Voting Project
Mischelle Townsend, Registrar of Voters, Riverside County
Charlie Wallis, Department IT Coordinator, San Diego County Registrar’s Office
Jim Wisley, Office of Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson

[dill]

23. Voter verified paper ballot

Shelley said he would implement all of the security recommendations
of the Ad Hoc Task Force on Touch Screen Voting.

At the insistence of Kim Alexander, David Jefferson, and me, the
final report of the task force specifies that, if there is a
voter verifiable paper audit trail and, after a manual count,
the paper records disagree with electronic records, the PAPER
RECORDS TAKE PRECEDENCE.

This doesn't appear explicitly in Shelley's recommendation; I hope
it hasn't been lost in translation.

In California, 1% of the precincts have to be manually tallied,
and it is relatively easy for a candidate to get a recount.

[newyawker99]

26. Hi dill!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Andromeda]

41. Only 1%?

Maybe I'm dense but that's such a small sample. I know it's better than nothing but I'd like to see it changed to include a wider representative sample on each precinct.

It's good that the paper records take precedence though and I hope it will be implemented the way it's supposed to be.

[creativelcro]

51. I have a question about the 1%

How is this number determined ? I assume it's based on statistical considerations, perhaps coupled with practical considerations. What I'm asking is what factors have been used to decide that 1% is adequate. Thanks. -CV

[dill]

57. 1%

I have no idea how the number was determined. 1% doesn't seem like
enough to me, either, unless there is a systematic problem.

However, so far as I know, California is the ONLY state to have such
a law. Although though I'm fuzzy on the details of California
election law, I have also been told that it is relatively easy to
get a recount if the candidate pays for it.

This is in contrast to some states, such as Nebraska, where there are
laws saying any recount must be done on the same equipment as the original count. Such laws seem completely insane to me.

I believe it is necesssary to fight state by state to liberalize
recount laws. That's going to be a hard job, but a VVPT or VVPB
or whatever you call it is not going to be helpful unless people actually DO the recounts.

[proud patriot]

10. I'm so happy to report that I was able to talk about The BBV issue

And let them know our Sec. of state has done
a great thing for Democracy . I was proud to be so
informed on the issue today .

[Andy_Stephenson]

18. Back up you go

:kick:

[RedEagle]

19. Is Shelley being "Played?"

I have a couple of questions about the task force. It could have been unintentionally "loaded." Meaning, we know a lot more now about some of these participants then we did when this task force was created. Did we know, then, that anyone on NASED's voting systems panel should be considered with extreme suspicion?

That's the kind of question that makes ascertaining what is going on very hard. But we only have to look at Sequoia's HEAVY involvement in CA voting to know that they are trying very hard to undermine things. Couple that with VoteHere's propensity for creating discrediting situations for individuals, yes, it gets hard to know who's on first.

Mark Kyle, Undersecretary of State (Chair)
(Was Kyle a Shelley appointment, or left over from Bill Jones? Jones is now working for Sequoia)

Marc Carrel, Assistant Secretary of State for Policy & Planning (Co-Chair)
(Same question as above)

Kim Alexander, Founder and President of the California Voter Foundation

David Dill, Professor of Computer Science, Stanford University
(Appears to have been compromised by VoteHere, not known at the time of the task force and unkown if willingly or not. Does not make enough caveats when talking about VoteHere, like, they haven't really made their code available)

David Jefferson, Computer Scientist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
(Unknown)

Robert Naegele, President, Granite Creek Technology, Inc.
(Hello, this guy is with a company that is on NASED's voting systems board. At the time, this may have seemed like a good thing to do)

Shawn Casey O’Brien, former Executive Director, Unique People’s Voting Project
(Does this organization represent the disabled? If so, we know they are being lobbied and used)

Mischelle Townsend, Registrar of Voters, Riverside County
(Longtime shill for Sequoia)

Charlie Wallis, Department IT Coordinator, San Diego County Registrar’s Office
(Unkown, as is the next person. The fact that they represent government officials means they have probably been the object of heavy lobbying)

Jim Wisley, Office of Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson


While I agree, what has been proposed is not tight enough, it's a huge step forward. And we have to remember that we have refined our language but it's not trickled down yet to all who need it.

If you read the above release from Shelley, he does call for a voter VERIFIED audit trail.

We need to flood the California media with the DOJ release that calls do-do on the idea that voter verified paper ballots disenfranchise the visually disabled.

The article in the PAPER called for the electronic audit, if I read what's been posted correctly. Shelley called for open source software, as I recall.

The dates are not stringent, but keep in mind, here's how they work:

Beginning in 7/2005, no one may purchase a machine that does not have v-vpb, and as of 7/2006, they all must have it, which means upgrades of existing DRE's.

OK, realise that only a very foolish county would continue to entertain the idea of buying non-v-vpb equipment. That 2005 date is really right now. We must also consider that those counties that have Diebold DRE's might be faced with total replacement, due to the shenanigans with the uncertified programs. It might be a probability that Diebold will get to fork over money on that one.

By 2006, all machines will have to have v-vpb. Now, if you are a county official, explain your rationalization for purchasing non-v-vpb machines expecting to have to spend on upgrading them later. Especially when the HAVA money would be now, not later. Upgrading will come out of taxpayers pockets.

Realistically, county officials have to look at buying machines about a year ahead of use. Yet they also have to look at the addtional cost they will face if they do not buy the correct machines now.

Are county officials making a fuss because they are only talking to three vendors, ES&S, Diebold, and Sequoia? Those three are, of course, going to make it VERY unprofitable to convert to v-vpb. But has anyone looked at the alternatives, Accupoll and Avante? I believe both are in the price range ball park of non-vvpb. Vogue could be a player, too, but their machine is a bit pricier.

Shelley has effectively put a damper on ANY purchases of machines that do not print a voter-verified paper ballot.

California needs to apply for the waiver to 2006 if they have not already.

Is Shelley's mandate perfect? No.

But it's one heck of a start.

Also consider if what you are reacting to comes from Shelley, or what some writer penned in a story. As we are all too familiar with, the media sometimes seems to deliberately mislead.

Where are the quotes from Oakley and Slocum? Why does Ms. Townsend, shill for Sequoia, get all the press? Why is that?

Are we being played? I can't answer that. But if it's a game, remember it can be affected. Turn the tables on the supposed games masters.

[jimmynochad]

20. Red, let me fill in a couple of blanks

First off, Bob Naegele passed away a few weeks ago. He was the author of the 1990 FEC standards. He was a very upstanding guy. He was a computer consultant hired by the state to perform some testing. I felt that the state did not let him always use his expertise to its fullest.

David Jefferson used to be big on electronic voting. He now is firmly in the paper camp. In fact he was the one that rebutted the Doug Lewis letter point by point.

I believe the two Mark(c)s are Shelley appointees. I am about 90% sure on that.

[RedEagle]

22. JNC

Thanks for the info.

I'm sorry to hear about Bob Naegele, it would have been good to get his take on what they didn't let him do with the standards, if I get your post correctly. I've heard that Munro had a hand in those 1990 standards, too. Which might explain what happened.

I think everyone on this board needs to send support to Shelley, AND advocate at the same time for voter-verified paper ballots, and make it clear that an encrypted solution is just hiding the democratic process behind the curtain again.

Transparency = Democracy

[newyawker99]

27. Hi jimmynochad!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[BevHarris]

24. Good analysis. My 2 cents

First, thank you JimmyNoChad for the update.

I agree that we need to support Shelley and send him overt evidence that he's pointing in the right direction, and along with that, make it clear that we are talking about a voter verified paper ballot, never a VoteHere-type solution.

I think Sequoia/VoteHere is positioning itself to take the dominant spot as Diebold falls, which would be replacing one flawed situation with another.

I notice that Dr. Dill weighed in here; what I wish he would weigh in with, once and for all, is a call for proper auditing and a paper ballot (not a paper trail). Dill was recently quoted in the Seattle Times, in the article about the Dan Spillane/VoteHere settlement, with praise for VoteHere because it supposedly released its system for review. The original deal was that is was supposed to release its SOURCE CODE. It did not. Instead of telling VoteHere that it needs to release the source code, as promised, Dill went ahead and set up a whole VoteHere section on his Web site anyway, practically a walking advertisement for the company.

I am getting more uncomfortable with Avi Rubin's role in this, specifically, when Sequoia's software was found on an unprotected Web site, he came out in public saying he thought it would fare much better in a review than Diebold (this is a classic blunder for any scientist, and guys, I grew up in a family of scientists. You never form opinions on what a review will yield before doing the study). We have VoteHere signing an alliance with Sequoia, then we have Rubin publicly announcing that Sequoia's software will probably be much better than Diebold's, and then Sequoia offers the software up for review, to none other than -- Avi Rubin.

In a nutshell:
1) Reinforce Shelley for his courageous stand, but emphasize that only paper ballots will do, never cryptography, and add that we want interim solutions in the mean time

2) Watch very carefully for a VoteHere/Sequoia takeover of the voting industry as Diebold and ES&S continue to falter, and watch the scientists like a hawk on this. None of the big three voting system vendors have earned my trust.

This is not a computer problem, it is a procedural issue for democracy, so, while the computer scientists have done a stellar job, in general, we cannot expect them to have the wisdom to make policy choices for us. We must keep our minds open to ALL solutions, including a straight paper, hand-counted solution, or a solution where the touch screen is used only as a printer, or solutions where we hand-count the presidential and U.S. Congress races.



Bev Harris
http://www.blackboxvoting.org

[creativelcro]

29. Well...

these guys (Dill, Rubin etc) probably have families, mortgages, they are starting to think about college for theirs kids, retirement, even if it is relatively late in the future... I do agree, it starts to seem suspicious.... -CV

[dill]

35. Income

Both Avi and I have better ways to make money than selling out to the voting industry. In my case, no one has offered, probably because they know what the answer would be.

[creativelcro]

50. That's great to hear!

thanks for clarifying. -CV

>>
Both Avi and I have better ways to make money than selling out to the voting industry. In my case, no one has offered, probably because they know what the answer would be.
>>

[dill]

34. VoteHere source code

I stand by the statement that I wish all voting machine companies would disclose information as VoteHere has. Of course, more disclosure would be even better, but none of the other companies have come close. I was hoping this would put some heat on other vendors to disclose their secret methods for making voting machines secure (ha!). It's unfortunate if anyone interprets this quote or what is on our web page as an advertisement for VoteHere. I don't mind publicly acknowledging their existence or even saying the system is interesting", but I've tried to make as clear as possible that neither I nor verifiedvoting.org endorses or recommends the system.

The "original agreement" about source code was a misunderstanding. I believe that VoteHere is willing to release source code, but I've been reluctant to get into it for the following reason: Even if the source code is perfect, there is no way to make sure that is what is running on the machines. If the scheme requires significant source code review, maybe we should just forget it. I was hoping their scheme could be verified without seeing the source code, just like the output of a printer is verifiable without seeing the device driver. For example, if someone could check encrypted votes on the web with software from a variety of sources, we wouldn't necessarily have to see the code that did the encryption. (This is all hypothetical hand-waving. I don't know if the VoteHere system has this property).

If the people who are looking over the VoteHere system say they need source code, then we'll demand source code.

If Sequoia were to deploy the VoteHere system with the current certification process, I would have no more confidence in it than I do in Diebold's or Sequoia's systems. I'm not sure a public review is adequate either. It's an experiment.

I agree that the policy decisions should not be handed over to computer scientists. Computer scientists are worth paying special attention to when speaking about computer science (although one should see whether other computer scientists agree!). When it comes to transparency of the voting systems, their opinions are no more valuable than anyone else's.

[RedEagle]

47. No Source Code?

I like the analogy of looking at what is printed and not having to see the driver. But the driver isn't what generated the document. The driver is a translation to the printer, for example, from Word. Word can have embedded products from other programs like BMP, JPG, or a link. If you can't read the source code, you don't know where what is printed actually comes from, or what elements comprise that final document. (Print in Word, have a graphic that was done by another program and embedded in it)

Unless you see the source code, you don't know what elements made up what was printed in all situations. It can pass a logic and accuracy test but be affected by other factors under the actual voting environment- time, date, other field entries, etc.

Without examining the source code, you don't know how pure the program actually is.

[dill]

39. Proper auditing and a paper ballot

The terminology "voter verifiable audit trail" was the best I could come up with in December 2002 after talking to a number of people. As far as I'm concerned, the only substantive difference between VVAT and "voter verified paper ballot" is the word "paper". I chose to call it an audit trail instead of a paper trail after several conversations with prominent computer scientists who preferred to leave the technological options more open-ended. I know that a lot of people don't agree with that, including a number of computer scientists, but that's the history. The important point is that the other words were certainly not chosen with the intent of being different from a voter verified ballot.

In the Resolution on Electronic Voting "trail" and "ballot" are used almost interchangeably. So far as I can tell, no one has intepreted voter verifiable paper trail to mean anything other than a voter verifiable paper ballot. The California task force chose to call them "records" rather than "ballots" after advice from Marc Carrel that calling them ballots would require them to be counted by hand all the time (or something like that -- unfortunately, I don't remember exactly what this was about). What I DO remember is that if there is a disagreement between the paper records and electronic records in a recount, the paper records take precedence. Kim Alexander, David Jefferson, and I would not have signed the report otherwise.

Bev, I'm unclear on exactly what you consider proper auditing, but it sounds like a good idea to me. Maybe I'm in favor of it, or maybe my thoughts on the subject are not clear. I don't remember seeing anything in your book on this topic that I seriously disagreed with.

[BevHarris]

44. Thanks for all the replies. Wow!

Dr. Dill, because the book was so schizophrenic (before Diebold, after Diebold) and the first chapters were boring, they were redone. I dealt a little bit with audit in the new Chapter 2, and more later in the book.

There are several options I could live with. Part of the problem we face is that the way politicians play with the system, what would normally work will almost certainly just get screwed with.

The biggest problem we have, procedurally, is that elections audits are treated as "you are not allowed to do more than this prescribed thing" whereas any real audit allows a human being to exercise judgement over what to audit, and you can always open it up to a more extensive audit at any point, even just on a hunch. Now, that is the only real way to audit in fraud-prone activities, like with money, gambling, and voting. But can you imagine how badly people will behave, if we allow for this thing called "judgement?"

Spot checks are not going to work. I illustrated several examples of this in the book. I think a 100 percent audit method is much better, and paradoxically, will probably be cheaper and faster also. The spot check idea has problems simply because it will be shamelessly manipulated.

If you were to spot check, you'd need the right to audit any anomaly to as great an extent as you want. You'd also need certain triggering events which would mandate a hand count. Getting into all the definitions of such events, and their remedies tends to get complex and could easily be messed with.

So, if you were to do a 100 percent check, I would favor printing human readable ballots which also include a bar code, and using a generic bar code scanner which is not allowed to be manufactured by any voting vendor or related company. It would take no more than 40 minutes to hand-scan all ballots in a polling place to compare with the machine tally.

Another idea, which would involved hand counting, would be to hand-count only the presidential and federal races. The problem with doing the whole thing as paper ballots and hand counts, and I have queried many of the proponents of this method over and over for their solution but they simply don't reply (!) -- it's this: We have too many questions on a ballot. If it takes 6 hours to hand count Canada with just one or two questions on the ballot, doing the math, it would take 6 weeks if you had 70 questions on the ballot, which we often do.

Just cutting back on number of questions has many problems, won't go into them here, but the problems are significant.

The problem with the VoteHere solution is that it takes the counting of the vote out of the hands of the people, and puts it in the hands of programmers and cryptographers, and that is a deal breaker. Our democracy will crumble, sooner or later, if we do this.

Bev

[dill]

60. 100% counts

I'm not sure that a 100% count with bar codes is superior to "ballot under glass" or printing ballots that are then run through an optical scanner. Most people cannot visually verifiy a bar code, so someone would have to go through and check that the bar codes agree with the printed text on the ballots. And that would probably be considered too time-consuming to do at the 100% level, so it would need to be done on a sampling basis.

I do like this solution, but I also think that sampling is still needed. Bar codes also have the advantage that they can easily be read by computer for voters with disabilities.

So far as I can see, this approach does have the advantage that any printer can do it.

[BevHarris]

61. Getting there...

printing ballots that are then run through an optical scanner.

The problem with the above is that the optical scanner would be made by the voting machine vendor, giving same programmers access to both sides that will be audited. An audit needs to have independent sourcing.

Most people cannot visually verifiy a bar code, so someone would have to go through and check that the bar codes agree with the printed text on the ballots. And that would probably be considered too time-consuming to do at the 100% level, so it would need to be done on a sampling basis.

I agree, and would envision that a sampling would have to be done to compare the two.

I do like this solution, but I also think that sampling is still needed. Bar codes also have the advantage that they can easily be read by computer for voters with disabilities.

Understand that it is critical that the bar code, if used, is on a ballot that is fully human-readable without an interface. Also, that the bar code be read by something generic manufactured by someone with no ties whatsoever to the voting industry.

Bev

[Zhade]

55. I must respectfully disagree.

As far as I'm concerned, the only substantive difference between VVAT and "voter verified paper ballot" is the word "paper".

The other difference - and a huge one, I think - is the use of verifiable in the former case, and verified in the latter.

Clearly, you and I both understand the difference, but to clarify for anyone new to anti-blackboxing activism: verifiable means "can be verified" (at a later date), whereas verified means the individual voter confirms his or her choice at the voting booth.

To remove the step of voter self-verification at the time of the vote is to further degrade the accountability and credibility of the voting system in question.

I know this may sound like nitpicking, but this is extremely important. The individual verification process, including the assurance that the voter's ballot reflects his or her choices, must remain in the hands of the voter, and nowhere else.

[dill]

58. verifiable vs. verified

I think the exact wording "voter verifiable audit trail" originates with our Resolution on Electronic Voting (see verifiedvoting.org)

"It is therefore crucial that voting equipment provide a voter-verifiable audit trail, by which we mean a permanent record of each vote that can be checked for accuracy by the voter before the vote is submitted, and is difficult or impossible to alter after it has been checked."

"before the vote is submitted" seems to cover what you want.

The Resolution on Electronic Voting was written to attract as many people as we could, and to put as few restrictions on the range of
solutions as possible. I went through many drafts, some of which insisted on paper, and this seemed to be the compromise that attracted the most people, especially technologists.

I don't have a problem with the term "voter verified paper ballots" to describe a paper-based voting system, but I don't want to go back and change the wording of the Resolution on Electronic Voting because thousands of people have already endorsed it.

[Zhade]

64. Okay...that's a bit more reassuring.

I would have preferred to see "would be checked" and leave out "difficult or", but I think this is okay, with the caveat that I'm no lawyer and thus don't know how much wiggle room this might afford any would-be fraudsters.

(Monday morning kick, also.)

[UrbScotty]

21. Just did!

:kick: for Democracy!

[Zhade]

25. Get back up there!

Not falling off the front page until at least Monday, so people remember to call or write Shelly!

[RedEagle]

28. Transparency = Democracy

I really appreciate all the input this topic has been generating.

Dr. Dill, I see that your statement says, "IF the system produces a voter verified audit trail,".... By that, it seems the task force's recommnedations have been diluted. I hope that you will come out with stronger statements for a voter-verified paper ballot that remains in a secure ballot box to be used as the official ballot of record.

I agree with Bev that now that the computer scientists have confirmed that we have a huge problem with these machines, it is time to combine that knowledge with procedure to improve the flaws in the systm.

We are by no means at the end of the "games" being played, including a potential monopoly of the voting industry by one vendor. If that sounds ominous to you, then get on the phone to your Congressmen and Senators and call for an investigation into monopolistic, private enterprise practices in what should be the most public of endeavors- voting.

Cryptography is no way to deal with voting. At a certain point in time, which will be VERY fleeting, a program may be deemed, "secure." That's only "deemed" because no one can know the ability of people around the world to circumvent such security. We have only to look at some of our own government spy type programs to see this. Voting should not be subject to such risk. It is all so totally unnecessary. Any such program will be in a continual state of upgrading. Stories abound about the fact that we just can't keep up with the ability to hack. So why even go there? Could it be because the nature of such a beast insures a steady income for it's vendor? Will our counties and states be shackled forever into paying for upgrades every year, that cannot be adequately reviewed for secruity and accuracy? We are leaving behind the KISS principle, and it applies in buckets here. There is simply NO NEED to get this complex. Complexity = lack of security. Complexity takes voting out of the hands of people and puts it in the purview of a very small, select, subset. Even if the creator of such a system has the very best intentions in mind, he will not be the sole person responsible for the system he creates. As soon as it is out of his hands, it is susceptible to corruption.

As I've mentioned before, there is no way to assure with a cryptographic system that a "Diebold" isn't being pulled. Oh yes, you can take your little slip of panacea paper to a computer somewhere and decode what's on it and say, "It looks OK." That is as precise as you can ever be about that. Nothing, absolutely nothing is in the way of a second program running in the background that is supplying the election results. You can have your "feel good" moment with that paper, but the election as a whole will never be subjected to an audit- or meaningful recount. Recount = audit.

You cannot ask the system to audit itself- ever. That is not an audit. It is an Enron accounting procedure. You have to get outside the tech to audit the tech.

Lynn Landes was one of the first to point out the dangers of a secret vote count. One clue to all of us should be the absolute, full scale attempt to stop the potential of really, truely, counting elections.

Democracy cannot rest on a very small subgroup of individuals to audit elections. Democracy belongs to the people. Ordinary people should be able to count real, voter verified paper ballots. Anything else is just a computer simulation. Even the CRS report called what's on the screen a "representation." Simulations and representations are NOT ballots!

Applaud Shelley's attempts, write and tell what should be contained in the mandates, and call for voter-verified paper ballots nation-wide.

If I were a computer scientist in the area of cryptography, I'd be a little nervous. I remember not so long ago microbiologists were becoming an endangered species. That's the trouble with putting so much power in the hands of a small subset of the population. It's too easy to manipulate or intimidate.

[frank frankly]

30. you all are so on top of this! unbelievable...

I feel like a fly on the wall reading this! It is over my head, completely, but I am trying to pick it all up. To be privy to such revolutionary live discourse is exactly why our internet will save us. Exponential mental growth between indviduals globally. Thrilling.

The brains on all of you! Amazing.

Y'all made my day! You're going to win.

:hi:

[dill]

31. Task force, crypto

The CA task force was largely packed with people who were either vehemently opposed to a paper trail under any circumstances and politically cautious people who regarded a paper trail requirement as too controversial. The recommendations WERE weak. It is important to understand that Shelley went WELL BEYOND what his task force recommended. That's all the more reason to support and defend his decision.

The strongest paper trail advocate on the task force was Kim Alexander. David Jefferson and I (computer science researchers) both held the position that there could hypothetically be other voter verifiable audit trail technology that we would trust, but that it didn't exist yet and there were no mechanisms currently for certifying such a thing as trustworthy.

The task force did NOT recommend a voter verifiable paper trail. The three of us (Alexander, Jefferson, and Dill) though hard about whether to sign the report, and refused to do so unless it included a clear statement that we felt there should be a voter verifiable audit trail requirement immediately ("Read my lips: no new DREs"). This DID appear in the report, and I'm sure it influenced Shelley's decision, which was sort of in-between the consensus recommendation and our group-of-three recommendation.

I disagree with your blanket rejection of voting systems based on cryptography. I think they are worth studying. On the other hand, I fully agree that the trustworthiness of the system should not depend on the opinions of an elite.

I still have no position on the VoteHere system, pro or con, except the generic opinion that they need to prove to the public that their system is trustworthy. That certainly means persuading cryptographers that it's ok (don't underestimate the difficulty of this task), but also includes the general public. In my opinion, if they can't win over the activists who are the driving force behind the verifiable voting movement, their system will not be successful.

[JohnGideon]

32. and your feelings on Open Voting Consortium

and the EVM2003 project?

[dill]

36. Open voting consortium

I think it's a great idea. At this point, I'm not sure that it will succeed as a competitor to commercial voting systems, so I am treating them more or less like other vendors that provide a voter verifiable paper trail, such as Avante, AccuPoll, and Populex. That means I'll share whatever technical advice I can if they want it (gratis), and I'm happy to learn about issues from them.

[loudsue]

43. Dr. Dill, I greatly appreciate your involvement in this....

I know when you're dealing with "changing the gov'ts mind", it is like scuba-diving in quicksand -- those with a political/commercial-backing agenda are such prolific spinmeisters, they tend to turn around any reasonable argument until it hardly resembles what you were discussing.

You did well, and I appreciate your efforts. I'm wondering, however, if there's some way to fan a flame under the arguments in favor of paper that can actually be hand-counted by any high-school student....in other words, it has to be so self-evident as to the intent of the voter that there's no chance for controversy. This has to be the "back-up" to any (certainly) more efficient computer tabulating the votes.

But there need to be spot checks all along during the election process, to see that the machines and the paper are telling the IDENTICAL same story (think "banks"). There is simply too much evidence that elections have been tampered with, and this is the elephant in the room that needs to be driven home at every opportunity. The temptation is just too great for those with a stake in the outcome....that truth is as old as elections themselves.

What would you recommend to make sure that paper ballot can happen?? We'll back you up!

:kick:

[dill]

59. What can we do?

Our current best strategy is to push hard for HR 2239, Rush Holt's bill. Is that what you had in mind?

Like BBV and other groups, we spend a lot of time at verifiedvoting.org trying to figure out what people can do -- we don't just want people to feel bad about the current situation, we want them to help fix it.

[RedEagle]

48. Crypto and the Elite

I do support Shelley. I initiated this post asking people to thank him for doing what they asked him to do.

I can understand that when you started, a "trail" seemed like the way to go. We have learned over the course of our time fighting for honest voting that trail can be too imprecise. "Ballot' is legal and says it all. If you use the term trail, then the opposition says that it is not the "ballot," and that ballot could be defined as the vote in the computer and not on the paper. We call it "wiggle room." Anytime the language can be interpreted another way, there they go. All of us can learn from the time we've spent at this and we've learned that if you tag that paper with "ballot," there is no confusing which is the legal record. Perhaps the key here is to call the computer version only a record, and the paper the ballot. Even in optical scan systems, that computer-counted "record" is what is used unless a recount or audit is called for.

I like this, if we combine all of our experiences, we can brainstorm the system we need to employ for accountable voting.

You said:
"I disagree with your blanket rejection of voting systems based on cryptography. I think they are worth studying. On the other hand, I fully agree that the trustworthiness of the system should not depend on the opinions of an elite."

I am glad we agree that the review of a system should not be the purview of a select few. Until such time as the world is educated in cryptography and we can pull several cryptographers out of a crowd, any inspection, review, and auditing of such a system will be up to a very select, small group. Otherwise, the system remains a secret, even to the election officials using it. Potential corruption is best served in the dark, the darkness of the inability of the rank and file to understand- although sleight of hand will do in the light of day, at times. We must not have a voting system that can only be checked out by the select few.

But, I imagine that by the time being versed in cryptography is commonplace, some new "method" will evolve, and we will be faced with the same question. The answer should always be that any citizen should be able to conduct an audit. That is the problem with DRE's now, unless they produce a voter-verified paper ballot.

Dr. Dill, I thank you for coming on this board and engaging in this discussion with us.

[loudsue]

33. RedEagle, I used part of your post in my e-mail to Shelley....

zzat ok w/ you??? You just wrote that post so beautifully, and sensibly, that I just copied and pasted part of it.....and added my many thanks for his involvement in this issue, with a reasoned plea for a VVPB...and only a VVPB.

O8)Prayers for success and protection to the BBV Patriots!O8)


:kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick:

[RedEagle]

45. Yep

Loudsue, if I put something here in plain sight, you can quote it.

Thanks for backing Shelley!

[AP]

37. Tell him we can't wait until 2006 to fix this problem.

!

[BevHarris]

46. Thank you. 2006? What election?

This situation is out of control, and needs to be nipped right now.

[AP]

38. Someone kick this up on Monday, so that I remember to call.

Thanks.

[Andromeda]

42. Kick

:kick: :kick:

[jimmynochad]

49. Big Meeting next week in CA

There is a CACEO conference next week in CA. This is where all of the county clerks are going to bitch about the Shelley ruling. I don't have the details in front of me but I know someone who is going to be there. Rumors are spreading everywhere among the elections officials.

My analysis of the evolution of this situation is that HAVA finally did some good. HAVA put the money in the states' hands. This put the power back in the hands of the states and not in the hands of the counties. No matter how cynical I am about goverment officials, I would rather fight this at the state level than the local county level. It is easier to focus resources to sway one person's opinion than several local officials who are easily snowed by their local salesman. The voting machine companies have spent millions on selling to the local counties. It was all wasted money in CA because despite the rumors, no one paid Shelley one red cent to get to his decision. It is the power of honest pursuation that won the decision from Shelley. I have it on good authority that he was upset when he found about Diebold's version control problems. The left over staff from the Jones era just bowed their heads when they had no answer for him.

Keep up the pressure on other states. There are forces in IL trying to stop their new law requiring paper records on DREs. Also, MO is for paper and NH and MN as well.

[Andy_Stephenson]

53. kickapoo Joy Juice

:kick:

[Zhade]

54. KICK

Back to the front!

[Zhade]

56. Sheesh! Busy day in GD!

Kick again!

[RedEagle]

62. Because some good things are happening here

Kick!

[RedEagle]

63. For the Monday crowd- write and support Shelley!

Kick!

[RedEagle]

65. One more time- support V-VPB!

Kick!