WP/AP: Voting Machines Under Scrutiny

Voting Machines Under Scrutiny
States Face a Jan. 1 Deadline to Meet Reliability Standards

By Brian Bergstein
Associated Press
Wednesday, December 7, 2005; Page A23


The potential perils of electronic voting systems are bedeviling state officials as a Jan. 1 deadline approaches for complying with standards for the machines' reliability.

Across the country, officials are trying multiple methods to ensure that touch-screen voting machines can record and count votes without falling prey to software bugs, hackers, malicious insiders or other ills.

These are not theoretical problems -- in some states they have led to lost or miscounted votes.

One of the biggest concerns -- the frequent inability of computerized ballots to produce a written receipt of a vote -- has been addressed or is being tackled in most states.

An October report from the Government Accountability Office predicted that steps to improve the reliability of electronic voting "are unlikely to have a significant effect" in the 2006 off-year elections, partly because certification procedures remain a work in progress....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/06/AR2005120601518.html

issue facing us my fellow DEMOCRATS

The electronic voting machine issue, I hope, will begin to emerge into a broader public consciousness.

I keep seeing slightly different edits of this AP story showing up in google news searches over the last week or so. I like it.

It's about time, too.

I mean, Fitz indicting Rove, for example, would be a godsend -- but sometimes there are small steps, along our way.

do you think?

That would have been wise. We don't do wise.

One for the voter and one for election authority to maintain in the event of a recount.

The voter doesn't get a receipt to take home. The voter-verified paper record is under plastic, or is dropped into a box, and is retained for recounts. It's illegal to take an official voting record out of the polling place because people used to use that method to sell their votes and the record proved to the buyer that the seller had voted "correctly."

Touch-screen machines ARE the problem. The only reason to make a simple counting/tallying device this complex is to ENSURE that it has lots of weak points accessible to insider manipulation. Notches on a stick would do the job, if you weren't interested in manipulating the vote.

Unless these "officials"/GOP plants/dupes consider paper ballots, they WILL NOT meet the stated goals. The ONLY justification EVER offered for electronic balloting was maximum speed. We need to make it known loudly and frequently that speed is NOT the issue. Elections were being called the SAME NIGHT long before anyone tried electronic balloting.

"There is more to life than increasing its speed." -- Gandhi

I agree, the corrupt are aided by complexity. But, whatever the motive for promoting and adopting DREs, the key argument against them is this:

Secret Vote Counting is Intolerable

(I've posted variations of this, so forgive the repetiton if you've seen it before. But, as Dean says, we must start repeating, and repeating, and repeating, the truth.)

Many people, particularly those who are comfortable with technology, miss the key problem with using DREs to record and tabulate votes. Inability to secure the systems against data loss or corruption isn't the problem, so arguments about the security or insecurity of a given DRE system are irrelevant. The problem is secret vote counting.

For the electorate to have confidence that they are being afforded free and fair elections that reflect their will, the processes for qualifying to vote, registering, casting votes, tabulating votes, reporting results and verifying results must be open, understandable, and accessible to every citizen. The guy down the street who dropped out of high school must be able to make sense of the how every aspect of our elections are conducted. (He may or may not bother to find out, but if he does, he needs to be able to make sense of it all.)

Not many people on this planet have the expertise required to make sense of computer security, therefore, the role of computers in our elections must be limited. DREs have no place at all.

People reject secret vote counting as a matter of principle – no convincing needed. Rejecting DREs as secret vote counters is not much of a stretch.

Acceptable Roles for Machines?

Computers could be designed to record votes in a way that minimizes over or undervote errors, but the output of the process must be a paper ballot that is counted in a way that is open to scrutiny and easy verification. Handcounting witnessed by members of the public works well in other democracies, but optiscan-type systems might be fine if the tabulation processes include ways for political parties and public interest groups to put the ballots through their own tabulators to verify the count. Of course, if a computer is used to record votes and produce the paper ballot, it would make sense to use the system to determine a preliminary count, but this count would be akin to a poll. It would be unofficial. To be worthy of trust, official results must be obtained by counting ballots in a way that is open to scrutiny and verifiable.

The purpose of HAVA and the purpose of faith-based vapor voting is to enable election theft. Period.

Electronic machines have, if anything, slowed the count due to simulated "malfunctions" and the inevitable lawsuits.

(edit for typo)

and I'm in that category, isn't a frigging pencil and paper faster than dealing with these vote stealers that confuse many people who use them?

People are finally persuing the right answers. about 4 and a half years too late... but who's counting? :sarcasm:

Thanks mom!

This is great news, and Diebold stock has started back down again, ahhhh.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=DBD&t=6m

Now, get your tin-foil hats ready because this one may be hard to swallow:

Windows-based hackery is one-thing, but what about integrated circuit chips that are not only proprietary, but the firmware that is resident is just as easily hackable AND much more hidden from anyone trying to probe what is actually being computed. It is just a matter of time, and this method of vote-stealing is much more insidious. "Open-source" needs to apply to the ENTIRE system, not just software, and these chips can just as easily be developed for touch-screen voting systems, or tabulating machines, or scantron-tabulating systems.... you name it!

rightwing causes, who lavishly lobby our election officials with events like that at the Beverly Hilton this August (a week of fun, sun and high end shopping, sponsored by Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia*), and who have taken advantage of the $4 billion "Help America Vote Act" boondoggle, to sell the states an election system that...

--contains "trade secret," proprietary software in ALL the voting machines, not just the touchscreens (DREs), and ALL the central tabulators, as well as "trade secret," proprietary firmware (the chips), and other nifty election theft features like internal modems (accessible by the company)

--contains virtually no audit/recount capability EVEN WITH A PAPER BALLOT, since the ballots are almost never counted (at best, a 1% automatic audit, completely inadequate for electronic voting; anything else is very expensive and difficult to obtain, requiring a candidate challenge, and often lawyers and court proceedings)

--is expensive to begin with, and requires constant servicing, upgrades and "patches," which adds to these already very insecure and hackable systems, by the presence of private company personnel (the only ones who know how to fix these machines when they break down during elections, which they often do), and by frequent alteration of the systems that are sometimes unauthorized and uncertified.

--permits not only the "tweaking" of close elections (by changing small percentages of votes, here and there), but also flipping over huge numbers of votes, with no accountability, as happened in Ohio recently, with the four ELECTION REFORM initiatives** (the machines--and their private masters--are now dictating election policy and preventing us from changing it).


The non-transparency and lack of accountability in this ENTIRE election system--throughout the states, in virtually all voting systems--is OUTRAGEOUS. Think about it. Your "paper ballot" (if you are so lucky as to have one) is almost never seen by ANYONE. They "count" manipulable ELECTRONS, not your vote. Your vote very nearly does not exist. And even in a rare recount situation, a partisan Sec of State (as happened in Ohio, with Bush partisan Kenneth Blackwell) can be selective in which precincts are recounted (with only a small number required) thus allowing private company personnel to come in and help election officials make the the machine's count MATCH the ballots, AFTER the fact.

Paper ballots (or "Voter Verified Paper Audit Trails") do NOT, by any means, guarantee a transparent electronic election. They have to be COUNTED, for such a guarantee, and they almost NEVER are. This leaves the system wide open to massive, undetectable, untraceable fraud, conducted at the speed of light, away from all human eyes.

And wide open to fraud is EXACTLY what the Bushites wanted, when they bribed the states with this $4 billion boondoggle that would benefit their buds and major donors at Diebold and ES&S.

Accounting for the Democratic Party leadership's SILENCE and EAGER ACQUIESCENCE to this fraudulent election SYSTEM would take too many paragraphs. Just consider this, as a rule of thumb: Democrats = venal corruption. Republicans = major crime.

The crime has been done. Bush is president, still--despite treason, torture and illegal war; despite massive theft and a trillion dollar deficit; despite all the polls that said he couldn't win; despite a 60/40 Democratic blowout success in new voter registration in 2004; despite almost all new voters, independent voters, and former Nader voters voting to oust him; despite his complete idiocy during the debates (and generally); despite his hunting for WMDs under the Oval Office rug and thinking it a joke(!); despite two years' worth of issue polls that say that the great majority of Americans disagree with every Bush policy, foreign and domestic; and despite exit polls on election day (the real ones) that said Kerry won.

The AP article starts way far at the OTHER END of this crime (now, today), and gabbles on about the need "to improve the RELIABILITY of electronic voting" (emphasis added), ON PAGE A-23! This may be progress, or it may be yet more maneuvering by the war profiteering corporate news monopolies to cover up THEIR part in the crime that took place on Nov. 2, 2004 (DOCTORING their exit poll numbers, on everybody's TV screens, late on election day, to hide evidence of a Kerry win).

Maybe it's a bit of both--progress, after TWELVE MONTHS of NON-STOP labor by election fraud/election reform activists and a few courageous Democratic representatives, that may alert a few more people that SOMETHING IS VERY WRONG; AND a cover-up, a little release of the pressure valves by the corporate news media, to give people the illusion that, with the GAO knowing about it and all, something is being done to "IMPROVE the RELIABILITY of electronic voting" (emphasis added).

"IMPROVE" the "RELIABILITY" of an election system that gave us Bush, war, bankruptcy, and piling naked Arab prisoners in a pyramid, and sicking dogs on them, and beating and torturing them to death.

_________________________

*Lavish lobbying
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x380340

**Bob Koehler article: pre-election prediction of a 60/40 win for 4 election reform initiatives, flipped over to a 60/40 LOSS on election day, in Ohio recently
http://www.tmsfeatures.com/tmsfeatures/subcategory.jsp?custid=67&catid=1824

________________________

For a pamphlet on the perils of electronic voting ("MythBreakers"): www.votersunite.org
For a project for statistical monitoring of elections: www.UScountvotes.org
For exit poll analysis: www.TruthIsAll.net

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

Throw Diebold and ES&S election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' NOW!

And the results CALLED in to the Secretary of State's office.


No electronics, no touch screens, no levers, no punch cards, no optical scanners, no central vote tabulators.


There is no other single issue more critical than this, if we want to rescue America for The People.

And we should hammer our Reps/Senators relentlessly about it. They need some sense knocked into them immediately on this. Our country is losing its grip on our way of life and the rule of law. If that happens, it will be a permanent, searing change.

corruption out of the sellers of the technology.

into the foreseeable future, voters will have no confidence in "voting machinery" unless and until it is examined and conducted in the sunshine, including the software workings and who owns the machinery, and having a proper way to reproduce the vote tallies.

Removing machinery from our vote casting and tallying process will be one of the ways to "get the moneyed influence out of politics" in a big way.


Otherwise, we should not allow any part of our voting process to be influenced by secrecy and mystery, other than a voter's choice of candidate in the booth.

I just can't see any way around this, especially with the urgency of 2006 upon us.


Paper and pen voting, hand counting at the precinct, under direct bipartisan observation, and calling in the tally by phone to the Secretary of State would:

1. Be simple.

2. Be relatively inexpensive.

3. Require no additional machine training of poll workers.

4. A separate blue voting ballot for Presidential voting. The other, state races on a single yellow ballot.

5. "Humidity" won't be a factor with paper voting.

6. Machines sequestered in warehouses in minority districts won't be a problem.

7. No machine technicians are necessary to diddle with machines, out of sight.

8. A power outage will not be a problem.

9. A savings of millions of dollars from trying to certify multiple types of machines.

10. A savings of millions of dollars from trying to buy printers to back up votes on machines.

11. Unsecured machine storage is no longer in the equation.

12. Computer hacking is thwarted entirely.

13. Hand-counted paper ballots can be recounted in a close race or questionable outcome. And shall be done in the presence of bipartisan observers.


And last, but not least:

14. By using paper and pen, hand-counting at the precinct under direct observation, and phoning in the tallies, We The People will regain confidence that our votes are cast, counted and reported accurately. For once. And for all time thereafter.


We will not pull our country out of this abyss until we take back our elections process for everyone.

work fine