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A voting machine manual was insecure by design, and the only states where it was used were states run by Republican jackoffs.

False. Admit your error, you jackoff. Or do you contend that IL and VA went for Trump, not Hillary! ?

You idiot. OpenElect is used in Illinois and Virginia both of which went for Hillary! Just go away - you're wrong all over the place, provably so...

The best electronic system you can think of is a Rube Goldberg compilation of spread sheets and Access databases.

Actually, I was thinking of the Diebold AccuVote TsX and its GEMS and BallotStation software, although that was a pretty good description of how it works under the hood. You've probably voted on it, and it has been used to elect congressmen, senators and presidents, so maybe you should know how it works.

You are either an idiot or a liar. Either way, you've proven you are incapable of discussion, intelligent or otherwise.

Ah, the classic "Well, you're a poo-poo head and I don't wanna debate wif yoo no more" defense. I bow to your superior intellect and will trouble you no more.

I'm in what I'd call an upper-middle-class suburb in Northern NJ.

Our area suffered multi-day power outages and some downed trees from Sandy, but minimal rain, no flooding, and other than gas lines things are getting back to normal.

I arrived at my polling place around 8:45am or so. There were 2 voting machines available for my precinct. One other designated for voters from a different precinct, but located in the same room.

Both machines were occupied when I arrived, and there was 1 other voter in front of me in line.

I waited about 5 minutes, during which time one other person lined up behind me. I voted, I left.

Regarding the machines - they were AVC Advantage machines - electronic, but I don't think they are digital/computerized/black-box systems (I hope not, at any rate). Found a .pdf describing them here: http://www.verifiedvoting.org/wp-content/uploads/downloads/AVCAdvantage.pdf

Verified Voting also does great work.

E-voting has had more lives than a cat. It should be over, done, kaput. An experiment that failed. Preach it brother, it amazes me that we put up with it. Verified Voting is trying to do something about it, for those who are interested.

I would like to take this chance to encourage everyone to support groups working towards open government, from Black Box Voting to Verified Voting, and everything in between.

The government is supposed to work for us; until we limit how often lobbyists talk to them, what right do they have to limit how much we talk to them?

I'm assuming that you have the Hart InterCivic system as stated by The Verifier. In that event, as other authiors have noted you may have no hope of detecting truly electrionic tampering. However you may spot some things. The links below also apply to Diebold and ES&S systems as well.

I would be sure, to tell all voters to read the confirmation screen carefully. Many other locations have reported instances of vote switching where voters, once they reach the closing screen, see a different outcome than they pushed. Evidence from a Rice University study indicates that less than 30% of people even read this screen but those that do have reported nontrivial numbers of flipped votes.

Secondly I would educate yourself about the machines. Ohio's Everest study, particularly chapter 14 contains many scary things about the machines. Some you can look for, many you cannot.

You will also find information from the California study notably the red-team reviews of the hart system.

Voters Unite is also a source of some good info As does Pollworkers.us which is a useful site for those working the polls.

All this made me start to wonder about voting machine requirements and this turned up - http://www.verifiedvoting.org/

Thought others might find it interesting.

and the only thing you need besides the voter-verified paper is a minimum of 5% automatically-triggered random audits.

We have it in New Mexico because we formed a voter group, studied it with experts, formulated the desired system, and made it happen.
http://www.votersunite.org/info/newmexicoaudits.asp
http://www.verifiedvoting.org/
http://www.uvotenm.org/

To be clear, the system we chose is:

paper with numerical ID the voter takes it to the scanner and inserts it (with assistance right at hand) the scanner gives an error code if there is a problem access to the the scanner's storage is physically tamper-proof sealed the memory chip is physically tamper-proof sealed automatic random audits are performed by hand on 5% of the scanners' results (versus the paper) to verify accuracy

This system was studied by a team of data security experts, and the probability of undetected tampering is very, very close to zero.

Check out these sites, and get involved, especially if you are in one of the 6 remaining states with no VVPR (Voter-Verified Paper Record) requirement and no audit requirement:

http://www.votersunite.org/info/newmexicoaudits.asp
http://www.uvotenm.org/leg.html
http://www.verifiedvoting.org/

The contract dispute in question seems to center on the use of systems for accessibility, not the purchase of a complete set of new systems. According to The Verifier Massachusetts use a mixture of Central-Count and Precinct-Count optical scanners for their elections with accessible devices for the disabled. That being the case I doubt that Diebold has much of a case.

For those unfamiliar with the dispute AutoMARK is a ballot marking system that allows voters with disabilities to use a touchscreen, keypad, or "binary switch" (sip and puff or gell-pad for people with no hands or little control over said hands say due to parkinson's or stroke) to fill out a printed ballot. The voter's choices are marked on the ballot using an ink that makes them suitable for scanning by any standard optical scanner (including the Diebold and ES&S scanners used in Massachusetts. The advantage of this system is that it enables voters with disabilities to cast the same type of ballot as everyone else thus avoiding the second-class-voter problem.

Diebold has no such device. In juristictions that use Diebold systems for accessibility, voters with disabilities cast their vote on a Diebold AccuVote-TS or TSX, a touchscreen Direct-Recording-Electronic system. Such votes are saved to the machine's internal flash disk and tallied at the end of the night separately from the votes cast on the optical scanners by every other person.

This is problematic for two reasons. Firstly, this means deploying two parallel voting systems on election day and tallying them separately. In effect this creates two classes of voters and subjects disabled voters to using a second-tier system. Similarly Diebold has yet to deploy the same range of accessibility features as are available on the AutoMark. For example they have yet to produce a usable "binary-switch" system.

For that reason I find it unlikely that Diebold will win this case because they are selling, quite simply, an inferior product.

Posting AC because I do not have a slashdot account. This comic should answer everyone's questions about electronic voting. As a bonus, it's also got a funny punchline. http://www.verifiedvoting.org/downloads/ft061029.g if

Brevard County FL has optical scan too - I don't see a difference in the recount totals
http://www.brevardelections.org/g120.htm
http://www.brevardelections.org/g120re.htm
other Florida counties show no difference here:
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/results/FL/frames et.exclude.html

the type of machine in each county is here:
http://www.verifiedvoting.org/verifier/map.php?top ic_string=5std&year=2004&topicText=&state=florida& stateText=

Verified Voting has long had The Verifier up on their site. This provides an interactive interface that gives more detailed info often on a county-by-county level. In many U.S. States the nuances of machines chosen and how they're deployed are up to the counties not the states. This results in an interesting patchwork of systems being run (often quite differently) under general and variable state laws.

Why can't an electronic voting machine with a paper trail satisfy the private voting/public counting principle?

I generally agree with you, but until the voting machines are open and the results easily verifiable by any layman, there is always going to be paranoia and speculation of this sort. That's why a voter verified paper trail is so critical: unless everything can be hand-verified, even if every voting machine maker is 100% honest and the machines all work perfectly 100% of the time, there will always be the lingering suspicion that shennanigans could have been pulled. That suspicion will trigger expensive lawsuits, and worse will further erode the public's faith in democracy.

We've had electronic voting booths for ages (we had incredibly complex mechanical ones until the old clockmakers that built them for us all died or retired).

But we still haven't had any election fraud attributable to the machines.

Basically, it's because we have so few electors our votes aren't worth stealing. :(

I mentioned a bit ago a link to an article I wrote citing and debunking R. Doug Lewis' dismissal of voter verified paper trails.

I didn't know it at the time, but Dr. David Jefferson had already seen that same article by Lewis and did his own debunking of it.

Jefferson is a very capable computer security expert and one of the better academics trying to do watchdogging on all this. He's actually gotten better of late at being willing to blow the whistle on various election systems fouls although he could have done better early on.

In any case, here's what Jefferson thought of Lewis:

http://verifiedvoting.org/article.php?id=68

So yeah, Lewis is one person I have just about zero respect for. All the worst stuff happened on his watch. The entire process he screwed up has been taken away from him very publicly and is being given to the new EAC.

The other thing is, hey, this is Slashdot :). We're geeks. We gotta have at least some place where we can tell it like it is, right? :)

Jim March
Black Box Voting

This mispelled drivel is "insightful?" You are fucking kidding me.

Anyone can go here and actually read about this if they want, instead of being a moron.

Several people with moderator points actually couldn't tell how stupid this is. Disgraceful.

[1] In fairness, this bill does have a couple of minor differences: it proposes that election day be a federal holiday, and makes doing things that liberals would like to make people believe are routine and widespread, like intimidating minorities and passing out fliers with incorrect voting dates, a felony. It also prohibits executives at voting vendors from being politically active, likely to pander to the people who think Diebold's CEO stole the election for Bush, completely ignoring the impossibility of actually executing on such an allegation statewide. In short, a shameless pandering publicity stunt, which ignores the completely legitimate bills already proposed two years ago above by respected members of Congress that would have addressed the two very topics discussed by Kos and noted in the article summary (namely receipts and open source).

[2] Before anyone decries HAVA: a frequent charge levied after the 2000 election was voter disenfranchisement and ballot spoilage due, in large part, to antiquated, malfunctioning, or broken mechanical voting equipment. Legislation was introduced guaranteeing a minimum standard for the equipment and processes associated with voting in all jurisdictions. Since we are living in the 21st century, electronic systems were specified. $3.9 billion was set aside under HAVA to replace all mechanical punch card systems with electronic systems by 1 January, 2006. The goal is to ensure a consistency and fairness in the appearance and operation of the voting systems, both for voters and local election officials.

After the 2000 presidential election, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA):

To establish a program to provide funds to States to replace punch card voting systems, to establish the Election Assistance Commission to assist in the administration of Federal elections and to otherwise provide assistance with the administration of certain Federal election laws and progra

Here is some info on the voting machines used in the county.

Unilect Corportation is the manufactorer of the "Patriot Voting System" (because losing votes = being patriotic).

Interactive demo of their voting system!

Verified Voting has a Voter Information Sheet on the machine.

Disinfopedia has an article about Unilect Corporation. From this article:

The President of UniLect Corporation is Jack Gerbel, who has been actively involved in the election equipment industry since 1965. His career began in elections with IBM Corporation and then as a founder, Vice-President and Board of Directors member of Computer Election Systems (CES).

Mr. Gerbel had the distinction of personally selling and installing more election systems than any other person in the U.S.

Two major accounts that he sold and successfully installed were Cook County, Illinois and the City of Chicago.

Mr. Gerbel became Vice-President of Sales for Business Records Corporation (BRC).

So, there you have it. Background info. Side note: I live in NC and this is not the same machines that were being (these are the literal words of the poll workers) "tested" in Watauga County. And although they officially said these machines were only experimental and being tested, paper ballots were often withheld upon request and their availability was NOT posted. The Republic Party in Watauga County also refused to move polling locations onto Appalachian State University's campus, proposed by the Dem Party, although 22,000 of the 25,000 residents are students.

Support the bills already in the House and Senate that will fix this, instead of fantasizing about how the 2004 election was "stolen" (it wasn't).

A frequent charge levied after the 2000 election was voter disenfranchisement and ballot spoilage due, in large part, to antiquated, malfunctioning, or broken mechanical voting equipment. Legislation was introduced guaranteeing a minimum standard for the equipment and processes associated with voting in all jurisdictions. Since we are living in the 21st century, electronic systems were specified. $3.9 billion was set aside under HAVA to replace all mechanical punch card systems with electronic systems by 1 January, 2006. The goal is to ensure a consistency and fairness in the appearance and operation of the voting systems, both for voters and local election officials.

After the 2000 presidential election, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA):

To establish a program to provide funds to States to replace punch card voting systems, to establish the Election Assistance Commission to assist in the administration of Federal elections and to otherwise provide assistance with the administration of certain Federal election laws and programs, to establish minimum election administration standards for States and units of local government with responsibility for the administration of Federal elections...

The putative reasoning for going with electronic systems was likely that since we have managed to design accountable and reliable electronic and computing equipment for the management of our power, medical care, money, etc., it likely was more or less assumed by the legislature that such accountable systems could also be applied to voting.

A bill has been introduced to amend HAVA. H.R.2239 and its twin Senate counterpart S.1980, discussed further here, will amend the Help America Vote Act such that there is "a voter-verified permanent record or hardcopy" attached with each and every ballot cast by every voter, and that "any voting system containing or using software shall disclose the source code of that software to the Commission, and the Commission shall make that source code available for inspection upon request to any citizen".

Additionally, the three electronic voting manufacturers already have the ability to add permanent, individual voter-verified paper audit trails to their products. Some e-voting critics make it seem like vendors are resisting. However, it is the local election boards that are resisting (as well as the slow march of bureaucracy). The e-voting vendors will build - and sell - whatever municipalities will buy.

Disclaimer: this comes from a previous post of mine on the subject

The statistical evidence (U of Pa., U of Calif.) indicates that there's something very funny going on. The academics who are often quoted by media "debunking" the concerns (the CalTech/MIT group) have apparently admitted that the data they relied on was faulty.

The statistical evidence (U of Pa., U of Calif.) indicates that there's something very funny going on. The academics who are often quoted by media "debunking" the concerns (the CalTech/MIT group) have apparently admitted that the data they relied on was faulty.

• Assassination Politics by Jim Bell
• The American Holocaust
• Anarchist's Cookbook
• Icky, unpatriotic, morbid beheading videos and such
• Bias to balance U.S. news bias
• Map of the White House
• Location of NYC water resevoirs
• Alex Jones loves progress!
• Economic terrorism #1 - buy nothing day
• Economic terrorism #2 - evil ad-skipping Tivo
• Economic terrorism #3 - running out of oil isn't a conspiracy theory.
• Economic terrorism #4 - the top 10 most fuel efficient cars of 2005 :)
• The widening wealth gap
• Paper trails make it much harder to steal elections
• Hamster dance!

If jackboot thug out there wants to arrest me for "implicitly supporting" the content of any of these links, feel free to abuse the PATRIOT ACT in order to force slashdot.org to reveal the IP address associated with this post, and in turn my ISP will reveal my name and home address associated with the DHCP lease (because I didn't bother to post through an anonymous proxy(s)). tinfoil_hat_mode off.

--

Clearly regulation is the only hope. Not to say that regulation itself can't get overcomplicated, but it is better than virtually nothing. Not everyone in government and business is dispicable.

The verified voting action center is a good place to start the struggle for this oversight. Call or write your congressman's office, it gets you a much bigger karma bonus than anything you do online. There are also local 'action alerts' as well. Check them all out.

I've read the article. I'll assume for the four students correctly conducted the analysis they've described. The results are compelling: Essentially, net of other effects, electronic voting had the greatest positive effect on change in percent voting for Bush from 2000 to 2004 in democratic counties.

But, the unanswered question is, is there a causal relationship between the presence of e-voting and the "unexpected" change in Bush voting percentage?

A few additional facts:

Of the 67 counties in Florida, 15 used electronic touchscreen voting. (map here)
Of these 15 counties, exactly three (Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach) were democratic counties. (map here)

The outlying data points, on which the students base their conclusion, consists of three counties. Which happened to have been the focus of the 2000 election irregularities. And which happened to have been heavily campaigned, by both candidates. One could argue that there are a couple of causal relationships here:

a) because the elections in these counties did not go smoothly in 2000, there was pressure to reform the process, and e-voting was installed.
b) because the 2000 election hinged on these counties, the campaigning was extremely heavy there in 2004.

One stimulus (2000 election debacle/recount) may have caused both the e-voting implementation, and the Bush shift.

The authors of the paper go on to say that a similar analysis of Ohio e-voting returns showed no relationship between voting method and change in Bush percentage. Why would the relationship be causal in Florida, but not in Ohio -- or anywhere else that we're aware of?

A frequent charge levied after the 2000 election was voter disenfranchisement and ballot spoilage due, in large part, to antiquated, malfunctioning, or broken mechanical voting equipment. Legislation was introduced guaranteeing a minimum standard for the equipment and processes associated with voting in all jurisdictions. Since we are living in the 21st century, electronic systems were specified. $3.9 billion was set aside under HAVA to replace all mechanical punch card systems with electronic systems by 1 January, 2006. The goal is to ensure a consistency and fairness in the appearance and operation of the voting systems, both for voters and local election officials.

After the 2000 presidential election, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA):

To establish a program to provide funds to States to replace punch card voting systems, to establish the Election Assistance Commission to assist in the administration of Federal elections and to otherwise provide assistance with the administration of certain Federal election laws and programs, to establish minimum election administration standards for States and units of local government with responsibility for the administration of Federal elections...

The putative reasoning for going with electronic systems was likely that since we have managed to design accountable and reliable electronic and computing equipment for the management of our power, medical care, money, etc., it likely was more or less assumed by the legislature that such accountable systems could also be applied to voting.

A bill has been introduced to amend HAVA. H.R.2239 and its twin Senate counterpart S.1980, discussed further here, will amend the Help America Vote Act such that there is "a voter-verified permanent record or hardcopy" attached with each and every ballot cast by every voter, and that "any voting system containing or using software shall disclose the source code of that software to the Commission, and the Commission shall make that source code available for inspection upon request to any citizen".

Additionally, the three electronic voting manufacturers already have the ability to add permanent, individual voter-verified paper audit trails to their products. Some e-voting critics make it seem like vendors are resisting. However, it is the local election boards that are resisting (as well as the slow march of bureaucracy). The e-voting vendors will build - and sell - whatever municipalities will buy.

You can view a county-by-county breakdown of the kind of voting equipment used in each state here.

People must have considered this, because the VerifiedVoting.org site has an answer to the question. They mention that an ATM machine provides a paper printout on the spot and that banks provide monthly information about bank account transactions. These guard against problems and provide information if a problem happens anyway.

1. Method of entering and recording votes.
2. Storage and delivery of votes for counting.

Voting with electronic storage of votes can be compromised in step 1 even if the local election staff is doing their job perfectly well. The e-voting machine could be compromised by the manufacturer and depending on their security level, by anyone else who has access to them including a monkey as well as in step 2 .

Voting by verified paper ballots can only be compromised in step 2, assuming any physical safeguards that may exist, such as seals on boxes containing the ballots and people in charge who may not agree with rigging the election, are somehow circumvented.

An ideal system may sign the paper ballots with a cryptographic signature so that it could only be compromised if both the manufacturer of the voting machines and the local election staff are.

Certainly there are better systems than unverifyable insecure DRE e-voting machines which have been plagued with bugs, hacked by a monkey and reportedly counted more than 100000 votes incorrectly and how-many-more due to more subtle and difficult to detect errors.

Electronic voting could make voting easier, but it is a good idea to have a voter-verifiable audit trail. As of now, not all electronic voting machines have such audit trails.

We trust computers with just about everything under the sun: our power, our health, our lives, our money

Security expert Bruce Schneier has talked about secure voting versus secure financial transactions. E-voting has the difficulty of secret ballots, which is not an issue for even the largest financial transactions. In addition, a single vote is associated with many others. Imagine redoing an election. It is much easier to figure out what happened if something goes wrong with a financial transaction. Though there are mission-critical systems, their design is different from normal systems, not to mention much more expensive. Electronic voting machines are not designed like this. In addition, voting machines have to be secure against deliberate tampering (possibly from the inside), as well as accidental failure.

Are you actually alleging that ALL THREE e-voting vendors - ES&S, Diebold, and Sequoia - have found some way to add votes only to the Republican candidates, undetected?

Do you think Kerry's $300M campaign, and the hundreds of experts who worked it for the better part of two years, just said "Oh, well! Guess we lost, even though there's proof of widespread fraud! Let's just throw in the towel and not say anything about it!" Wake up.

These are EXACTLY the kinds of problems, i.e., errors and failures in equipment (and setup) that we aim to prevent. But it is not possible for a central entity to control the vote.

We do need verified voting, but I'm sorry to say that there was no widespread fraud in all e-voting states. It's just not possible. There are thousands of people involved, thousands of pieces of equipment, many, many, many election and other government officials at all levels in extremely disparate jurisdictions with different ways of doing things, with no way for any central entity to reach these machines after the fact. (And no, they don't come "preloaded" with votes for Republican candidates; the logistics of the way they're set up and the diversity of the the configurations also makes that impossible.)

Bush won. Again. Get over it.

H.R.2239 and S.1980, discussed further here [verifiedvoting.org], will amend the Help America Vote Act (an act designed to ensure consistent voting systems that meet certain standards be available to ALL voters in ALL jurisdictions), such that there is "a voter-verified permanent record or hardcopy" attached with each and every ballot cast by every voter.

Please, simply support this legislation.

Additionally, the electronic voting manufacturers, such as Diebold, already have the ability to add permanent, individual voter-verified paper audit trails to their products .[1] Don't believe people who make it seem like companies like Diebold are resisting. They aren't. They'll build - and sell - whatever municipalities will buy.

The roadblock, as it turns out, is often local election boards. First, the new paper verification systems NEED to go through the government certification process - remember, it's the e-voting watchdogs who are chastising non-certified patches/updates being put into place; the paper audit systems need to go through the same certification process. Further, many municipalities can't understand why they should be forcing paper audit trails; after all, they think, they are just getting away from paper ballots - why should they be arguing for paper ballots (and all the headaches that go along with them, ON TOP of the headaches they already have from learning to deal with e-voting), so why should they go back to them?

Folks, so many people are involved in elections at so many different levels that there is literally no way that any central entity could rig an election across an entire state. Experts dealing with e-voting don't even have this on their radar. Their concern is more errors and failures. E.g., most of Ohio is still punchcard as it is (the majority of the 35 counties moving to e-voting pushed off the transition until AFTER the election because of problems), and someone like Diebold doesn't even have access to this equipment after the fact. Yes, an unscrupulous election official or enterprising hacker might be able to breach individual machines and potentially even a county - it's possible. But the likelihood of something like that happening on any significant scale, ESPECIALLY without being caught (the articles we're talking about here actually prove that the audit processes, be they what they are, do work) is very, very low.

That said, we absolutely sho

stolenelection2004.com
votergate.tv
Outrage in Ohio
Was the Ohio Election Honest and Fair?
Kerry Won
Shoplifting the Presidency?
Ultimate Felony Against Democracy

Surprising Pattern of Florida's Election Results
votes for party president versus voters registered
exit_poll(gif)
Florida2004chart

openvotingconsortium.org
verifiedvoting.org/eirs
electionprotection2004.org
The Rise of Open-Source Politics
cpsr.net

Presume once congress & the administration are aware to the purported problems they'll respond rapidly with "Help America Vote Act - II".

stolenelection2004.com
votergate.tv
Outrage in Ohio Was the Ohio Election Honest and Fair?
Kerry Won
Shoplifting the Presidency?
Ultimate Felony Against Democracy

Surprising Pattern of Florida's Election Results
votes for party president versus voters registered
exit_poll(gif)
Florida2004chart

openvotingconsortium.org
verifiedvoting.org/eirs
electionprotection2004.org
The Rise of Open-Source Politics
http://www.cpsr.net

Presume once congress & the administration are aware to the purported problems they respond rapidly with "Help America Vote Act - II".

H.R.2239 and S.1980, discussed further here, will amend the Help America Vote Act (an act designed to ensure consistent voting systems that meet certain standards be available to ALL voters in ALL jurisdictions), such that there is "a voter-verified permanent record or hardcopy" attached with each and every ballot cast by every voter.

Please, simply support this legislation.

Additionally, the electronic voting manufacturers, such as Diebold, already have the ability to add permanent, individual voter-verified paper audit trails to their products .[1] Don't believe people who make it seem like companies like Diebold are resisting. They aren't. They'll build - and sell - whatever municipalities will buy.

The roadblock, as it turns out, is often local election boards. First, the new paper verification systems NEED to go through the government certification process - remember, it's the e-voting watchdogs who are chastising non-certified patches/updates being put into place; the paper audit systems need to go through the same certification process. Further, many municipalities can't understand why they should be forcing paper audit trails; after all, they think, they are just getting away from paper ballots - why should they be arguing for paper ballots (and all the headaches that go along with them, ON TOP of the headaches they already have from learning to deal with e-voting), so why should they go back to them?

Folks, so many people are involved in elections at so many different levels that there is literally no way that any central entity could rig an election across an entire state. Experts dealing with e-voting don't even have this on their radar. Their concern is more errors and failures. E.g., most of Ohio is still punchcard as it is (the majority of the 35 counties moving to e-voting pushed off the transition until AFTER the election because of problems), and someone like Diebold doesn't even have access to this equipment after the fact. Yes, an unscrupulous election official or enterprising hacker might be able to breach individual machines and potentially even a county - it's possible. But the likelihood of something like that happening on any significant scale, ESPECIALLY without being caught (the articles we're talking about here actually prove that the audit processes, be they what they are, do work) is very, very low.

That said, we absolutely should be ensuring that there is a permanent, voter-verified, paper record. It is absolutely critical to our voting process, even if the software is still proprietary on these systems (though it, too, should be open for public inspection). But the permanent voter-verified paper record alone eliminates the chances for any widespread fraud with the counting process itself, and at the very least makes any fraud easily reversible and/or detectable.

Contact your representative and senators, and urge them to support the above bills. It will be a lot more productive that imagining fantasies about Diebold "handing" Bush the election. (If ANYTHING remotely like that happened, there are a shitload of professors, campaign staff, scholars, journalists, and researchers who know a LOT more than you do who would be all over this in a heartbeat. Kerry's $300 million, two-year campaign didn't just roll over for no reason. Bush won, whether anyone likes it or not, and it wasn't because electronic voting handed anyone anything. The POINT here, is that instead of inventing wild conspiracy theories, we should be ensuring that there is voter verification and a permanent paper record for all future elections, because HAVA will require a shift to electronic voting for everyone - before that happens, we should make sure that it's veri

See also:
http://verifiedvoting.org/verifier/

https://voteprotect.org/?display=EIRMapNation

The 1-866-OUR-VOTE election hotline is open today, so you can watch incidents come into the system in real time. This system will be used on election day to dispatch lawyers and techies to trouble spots in real time. Go to http://electionprotection2004.org or send mail to volunteer@verifiedvoting.org to volunteer.

[I am the lead programmer for EIRS.]

For all the Americans out there, we live in a democracy where "all decisions are made by representatives who act by [our] consent". However, it is incredibly difficult for an elected representative to follow his/her constituent's wishes if they are not informed of which bills they should vote for by their constituents.

A simple letter (here or here or here or here) is one of the easiest ways to inform your elected representative of your stance in regard to certain bills. If you feel strongly enough about fixing the current state of electronic voting in this country, I highly reccomend writing to your elected representatives to inform them of your concerns and certain bills which they should support.

Remember, for a democracy to work as intended there needs to be participation by all of its citizens though voting as well as keeping their elected representatives informed of the citizens wishes.

Also remember that when contacting your representatives a signed, mailed letter makes a much bigger impact than an e-mail.

For all the Americans out there, we live in a democracy where "all decisions are made by representatives who act by [our] consent". However, it is incredibly difficult for an elected representative to follow his/her constituent's wishes if they are not informed of which bills they should vote for by their constituents.

A simple letter (here or here or here or here) is one of the easiest ways to inform your elected representative of your stance in regard to certain bills. If you feel strongly enough about fixing the current state of electronic voting in this country, I highly reccomend writing to your elected representatives to inform them of your concerns and certain bills which they should support.

Remember, for a democracy to work as intended there needs to be participation by all of its citizens though voting as well as keeping their elected representatives informed of the citizens wishes.

Also remember that when contacting your representatives a signed, mailed letter makes a much bigger impact than an e-mail.

For all the Americans out there, we live in a democracy where "all decisions are made by representatives who act by [our] consent". However, it is incredibly difficult for an elected representative to follow his/her constituent's wishes if they are not informed of which bills they should vote for by their constituents.

A simple letter (here or here or here or here) is one of the easiest ways to inform your elected representative of your stance in regard to certain bills. If you feel strongly enough about fixing the current state of electronic voting in this country, I highly reccomend writing to your elected representatives to inform them of your concerns and certain bills which they should support.

Remember, for a democracy to work as intended there needs to be participation by all of its citizens though voting as well as keeping their elected representatives informed of the citizens wishes.

Also remember that when contacting your representatives a signed, mailed letter makes a much bigger impact than an e-mail.

For all the Americans out there, we live in a democracy where "all decisions are made by representatives who act by [our] consent". However, it is incredibly difficult for an elected representative to follow his/her constituent's wishes if they are not informed of which bills they should vote for by their constituents.

A simple letter (here or here or here or here) is one of the easiest ways to inform your elected representative of your stance in regard to certain bills. If you feel strongly enough about fixing the current state of electronic voting in this country, I highly reccomend writing to your elected representatives to inform them of your concerns and certain bills which they should support.

Remember, for a democracy to work as intended there needs to be participation by all of its citizens though voting as well as keeping their elected representatives informed of the citizens wishes.

Also remember that when contacting your representatives a signed, mailed letter makes a much bigger impact than an e-mail.

...however, I would think the Republicans would be up in arms about this. After all, isn't the military the largest portion of the voting public abroad? And don't they overwhelmingly vote Republican?

This site that's being blocked is intended for civilian expatriates only. Military votes are handled separately.

The military is something like 55% Republican. But civilians living overseas are another matter. According to a Zogby poll, voters with passports favor Kerry over Bush by 55 to 33 percent.

Also, for any expatriates reading this, a proxy server has been set up by the Verified Voting Foundation. Let's see the Pentagon block the proxy.

"Sorry to interrupt you, Alex, but the contestant was actually correct!"

In all seriousness, though, your very cropped quote is quite disingenuous, given the important omission of the following:

Thirteen Democratic members of the House of Representatives, raising the specter of possible civil rights violations that they said took place in Florida and elsewhere in the 2000 election, wrote to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in July, asking him to send observers.

Furthermore, I see no political slander anywhere, neither in the grandparent post nor in the article itself. I assume what you must be talking about would be this:

Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee of California agreed.

"This represents a step in the right direction toward ensuring that this year's elections are fair and transparent," she said.

"I am pleased that the State Department responded by acting on this need for international monitors. We sincerely hope that the presence of the monitors will make certain that every person's voice is heard, every person's vote is counted."

If we as a nation truly have nothing to hide, this will be a nice vindication of our way of doing things. On the other hand, if there are real issues, best to find them and deal with them.

Some people are concerned about e-voting because of security and/or reliability issues. And rightly so. If other people are concerned because fear of e-voting will reduce voter turnout, that concern is also valid. People will not want to use an unreliable voting system. Also, the total voter turnout is important for voting and democracy to work. This might well indicate that the issues concerning e-voting should be taken seriously. However, others might argue from this that few people are actually concerned about the process itself and that most concern is about others refusing to participate because of their fears. Hopefully, concerned voters will use alternative voting methods such as absentee ballots or they will find out about measures such as voter-verifiable paper trails.

Why are many individuals not concerned about security and reliability problems with e-voting? There are several possible reasons:

1. E-voting is impressive, like technology is often impressive. This could be particularly true for older people.
   
2. People have had bad experiences with paper ballots and e-voting will supposedly solve this problem.
   
3. Assumptions that "we trust technology for air-traffic control, etc." (see this response) or "we trust computers for billion-dollar transactions" (see this response) and so "e-voting should be easily secure". Securing an existing computer system, even something like a home PC, can be quite difficult.
   
4. Voting should be effortless, and even a paper receipt adds effort. This is similar to "instant gratification."
   
5. Voting should be accessible, and a paper ballot would interfere with that. Hopefully, voting can be made reliable and accessible (see this response.)

Some people are concerned about e-voting because of security and/or reliability issues. And rightly so. If other people are concerned because fear of e-voting will reduce voter turnout, that concern is also valid. People will not want to use an unreliable voting system. Also, the total voter turnout is important for voting and democracy to work. This might well indicate that the issues concerning e-voting should be taken seriously. However, others might argue from this that few people are actually concerned about the process itself and that most concern is about others refusing to participate because of their fears. Hopefully, concerned voters will use alternative voting methods such as absentee ballots or they will find out about measures such as voter-verifiable paper trails.

Why are many individuals not concerned about security and reliability problems with e-voting? There are several possible reasons:

1. E-voting is impressive, like technology is often impressive. This could be particularly true for older people.
   
2. People have had bad experiences with paper ballots and e-voting will supposedly solve this problem.
   
3. Assumptions that "we trust technology for air-traffic control, etc." (see this response) or "we trust computers for billion-dollar transactions" (see this response) and so "e-voting should be easily secure". Securing an existing computer system, even something like a home PC, can be quite difficult.
   
4. Voting should be effortless, and even a paper receipt adds effort. This is similar to "instant gratification."
   
5. Voting should be accessible, and a paper ballot would interfere with that. Hopefully, voting can be made reliable and accessible (see this response.)

One real problem with eVACS is that, to my knowledge, it doesn't produce voter-verified receipts yet (please let me know if I'm wrong). Thankfully, the new OSS/FS site identifies this as one of the first things to be added. As noted by places such as the verified voting site, voter verified receipts are a critical need. In fact, I'd argue that only the counted paper ballots should actually count, and make sure that the vote-creating and vote-counting systems are separate (using some sort of standard representation on the paper, so that you can have different groups re-implement each side).

Two questions about (Republican) touchscreen voting machine designs:

1) Why is it necessary or acceptable for a supposedly well-tested black box system, with software that is supposedly certified by election officials, to allow software updating via PCMCIA card and even worse, to allow a user to pop up a window where they can enter and execute arbitrary new code? It seems to me the only purpose of this latter feature is to allow vote tampering with a minimal evidence trail. And that arbitrary code feature is obviously what the Sequoia people have been practicing with.

2) Why do people automatically assume that touchscreen voting machines require network-based vote tabulation? Almost all of the security and verifiability problems are due to network tabulation, not the touchscreen terminals. They could easily be designed to print out paper ballots directly, which would add voter verifiability (greatly reducing rejection rates due to problems with the touchscreen systems), and then optically scanned - with a MUCH lower rejection rate than normal optically-scanned ballots. The touchscreen systems and scanning systems could be provided by different vendors. This approach might cost more, but if the vendors were non-profit orgs, it probably wouldn't. And it would probably result in the lowest rejection rates of all voting technologies, as opposed to the currently prevalent networked touchscreen approach, which has the highest rejection rate (yes, higher than punch cards).

I have been increasingly alarmed at the lack of attention paid to this issue by the Democrats and the national media. I've been telling everyone I can since early 2003 that Bush will "win" in 2004, regardless of the actual votes cast, because the election is rigged in 15 or 20 states (and it probably only needs to be rigged in 2 or 3 states). And NFB (nfb.org) and LWV (lwv.org) are idiotically backing this conspiracy, for what they think is a noble purpose (better disabled access to voting).

Check out Verified Voting!

The commonly describe approach is a receipt printed behind glass that the user can inspect. He presses one of two buttons, to either accept the paper or shred it. He never touches the receipt directly (so even he can't alter it.)