Pulling the plug on electronic elections. (X-POST)

[kster]

Posted by: helderheid

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1940218

Aviel Rubin, 09.04.06, 12:00 AM ET

You don't like hanging chads? Get ready for cheating chips and
doctored drives.

I am a computer scientist. I own seven Macintosh computers, one
Windows machine and a Palm Treo 700p with a GPS unit, and I chose my
car (Infiniti M35x) because it had the most gadgets of any vehicle in
its class. My 7-year-old daughter uses e-mail. So why am I advocating
the use of 17th-century technology for voting in the 21st century--as
one of my critics puts it?

The 2000 debacle in Florida spurred a rush to computerize voting. In
2002 Congress passed the Help America Vote Act, which handed out $2.6
billion to spend on voting machines. Most of that cash was used to
acquire Direct Recording Electronic voting machines.

Yet while computers are very proficient at counting, displaying
choices and producing records, we should not rely on computers alone
to count votes in public elections. The people who program them make
mistakes, and, safeguards aside, they are more vulnerable to
manipulation than most people realize. Even an event as common as a
power glitch could cause a hard disk to fail or a magnetic card that
holds votes to permanently lose its data. The only remedy then: Ask
voters to come back to the polls. In a 2003 election in Boone County,
Ind., DREs recorded 144,000 votes in one precinct populated with fewer
than 6,000 registered voters. Though election officials caught the
error, it's easy to imagine a scenario where such mistakes would go
undetected until after a victor has been declared.

Consider one simple mode of attack that has already proved effective
on a widely used DRE, the Accuvote made by Diebold (nyse: DBD - news -
people ). It's called overwriting the boot loader, the software that
runs first when the machine is booted up. The boot loader controls
which operating system loads, so it is the most security-critical
piece of the machine. In overwriting it an attacker can, for example,
make the machine count every fifth Republican vote as a Democratic
vote, swap the vote outcome at the end of the election or produce a
completely fabricated result. To stage this attack, a night janitor at
the polling place would need only a few seconds' worth of access to
the computer's memory card slot.

MORE >>>
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/0904/040.html?partner...

[Iwasthere]

1. Well written. Thanks for the reminder. Keep writing

We have to keep up the pressure. Join John Conyers campaign. Behind closed doors they are laughing at us right now. They think they have it in the bag. Lets show them they do not. No fear! Even in the face of their biggest distraction, a major attack within our country (which will be an inside job).

[Bill Bored]

2. Didn't you see that he's saying the ballots are optically scanned?

Did you read it kster, because there's nothing in there about hand counted paper ballots, or even hand marked ones!

Nevertheless, I think it was pretty well-written and Forbes is kind of a Repuke-oriented rag so it's good for Rubin to speak to that audience.

[kster]

3. You choice, Bill bored if you want to believe

that optiscan can be done with CROOKS running the show, thats totally up to you. This article does exactly what Avin wants it to do, speak to that audience at hand, But, You, and I, both know the facts about what can be done if you use Optiscan or DRE vote counting equipment to count and tabulate our votes, if you don't want to admit it or believe it, thats totally up to you.

But in my America, if you people want to use optiscan or DRE there has to and WILL BE a paper ballot to count after the fact, and no one in this Government, who has remained silent on this issue is going to give us the rules, as to how many of them ballots we are permitted to count. GET USED TO IT!

[OnTheOtherHand]

4. let's take a look at what Rubin actually says

My ideal system isn't entirely Luddite. It physically separates the candidate selection process from vote casting. Voters make their selections on a touchscreen machine, but the machine does not tabulate votes. It simply prints out paper ballots with the voters' choices marked. The voters review the paper ballots to make sure the votes have been properly recorded. Then the votes are counted; one way is by running them through an optical scanner. After the polls close, some number of precincts are chosen at random, and the ballots are hand counted and compared with the optical scan totals to make sure they are accurate.

If you want to slug it out with Rubin, that's totally up to you. No need to snark at BB about it, although of course he is a bit easier to reach.

[BeFree]

5. Another

Rube Goldbeg idea of making something simple into something as convoluted as possible. What idiocy!

To further the idiocy, he does the Rube Golberg act then goes all the way back to the most accurate way of counting votes: "..and the ballots are hand counted...."

He knows the machines are fraught with difficulty, yet presumes to get around that difficulty by making it even more difficult by using two different styles of corruptible machines and relying on checks that can be messed with.

Still, the ultimate reliance is HCPB. Lets just cut to the chase and KISS, eh?

[kster]

6. Make it real simple, No rich kid is gonna be

sending our kids into a make believe election day, all while counting the votes in secret. We know what they are doing and its over!

[Kelvin Mace]

10. So, we will have only HCPB

in November?

My, you do have clout.

Care to place a wager on it?

[Land Shark]

14. that sure isn't an "ideal" system to use a touchscreen as a ballot printer

it forces a big bottleneck into the process, people stand in lines, and rich districts get better service than poor districts that can afford fewer bottlenecking machines.

[Kelvin Mace]

9. GET USED TO IT!

Ballots will be counted by computers. We need to pass HR-550 to make sure that it is done honestly and accurately.

[kster]

12. KEEP TRYING TO CHANGE THE SUBJECT BUT,

SHOW ME THE VOTE ----BEING---- COUNTED, THAT IS WHAT YOU NEED TO DO! GOT IT KID!

[Kelvin Mace]

13. And you keep living in a fantsay world

Again, I ask you. What have YOU done onthe issue? Please tell me about YOUR conversation with YOUR local election officials and their response to YOUR call for HCPB.

[kster]

15. I need to see the votes--BEING --counted

and if you read the poll, on this, I am not the only one who thinks that Any and All Americans have the RIGHT to see the votes --BEING---counted.

[Kelvin Mace]

17. You can see them counted in my state

You can watch as the ballots are loaded in the OpScan system and counted, and you can watch the random audits hand-counted. Pass HR-550 and you can see that in every state.

But, you ducked my question:

What are YOU doing (besides complaining here) about getting your utopia? What did your local BoE say about your demand that they drop all the machines and count everything by hand?

[kster]

18. The game is up, You may

not want to accept that fact, but the SECRET VOTE COUNTING game is up, ONLY A MATTER OF TIME before we the people demand to see the VOTES--- BEING --- COUNTED.

Good luck to ya.

[Kelvin Mace]

19. So you are doing NOTHING

to advance your viewpoint, other than post wild bloviation with no basis in reality here.

OK, gotcha.

It is ONLY A MATTER OF TIME before people like you demand that OTHER---PEOPLE---MAKE---YOUR---FANTASIES---COME---TRUE!

[kster]

20. Show me where to go, to see the vote--BEING--counted

you need not explain it to me, because I want you to SHOW me where, I go to see the vote --BEING--Counted. You are not able to do that ARE YOU?

Now its your turn to try and change the subject......Good luck!

[Kelvin Mace]

21. I told you

you ignored it.

You are unwilling to actually work for what you claim to want. You just want to sit back and whine about it.

[Kelvin Mace]

16. deleted

Posted wrong spot

[agentkgb]

7. Backwards Counting

I heard one voting machine in a Democratic stronghold had a maximum number of votes it could record for a single candidate, and after that it started counting backwards. Also, Project Censored has a list of weird stuff from 2004.

[Kelvin Mace]

8. Rubin supports OpScan and HR-550

He suggests using computers to create your ballot, then OpScan to count them, while checking accuracy with a sample hand count. This gives you the best of both worlds, but is VERY, VERY expensive.

Personally, I have advocated this solution, and would be willing to spend the money if it were up to me (I consider elections on par with national security issues), I just doubt you'll get election officials to do so.

[Kurovski]

11. Kick

I missed this thread on the first go-round. Thanks for the heads-up.