Two items on voting security & electoral politics

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: kelley () inkworkswell com
Date: June 1, 2006 8:23:35 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Two items on voting security & electoral politics

Hi Dave,

Two items on voting/the 2004 election. The first is a lengthy,  
footnoted article in Rolling Stone by Robert Kennedy, 'Was the 2004  
Election Stolen?', at <http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/ 
10432334/%20was_the_2004_election_stolen>


An excerpt:

"Indeed, the extent of the GOP's effort to rig the vote shocked even  
the most experienced observers of American elections. 'Ohio was as  
dirty an election as America has ever seen,'Lou Harris, the father of  
modern political polling, told me. 'You look at the turnout and votes  
in individual precincts, compared to the historic patterns in those  
counties, and you can tell where the discrepancies are. They stand  
out like a sore thumb.'"


From Newsweek, Steven Levy's 'Will Your Vote Count in 2006?'

'When you're using a paperless voting system, there is no security,'  
says Stanford's David Dill.


May 29, 2006 issue - Just when you thought it was safe to go back  
into the voting booth, here comes more disturbing news about the  
trustworthiness of electronic touchscreen ballot machines. Earlier  
this month a report by Finnish security expert Harri Hursti analyzed  
Diebold voting machines for an organization called Black Box Voting.  
Hursti found unheralded vulnerabilities in the machines that are  
currently entrusted to faithfully record the votes of millions of  
Americans.

How bad are the problems? Experts are calling them the most serious  
voting-machine flaws ever documented. Basically the trouble stems  
from the ease with which the machine's software can be altered. It  
requires only a few minutes of pre-election access to a Diebold  
machine to open the machine and insert a PC card that, if it  
contained malicious code, could reprogram the machine to give control  
to the violator. The machine could go dead on Election Day or throw  
votes to the wrong candidate. Worse, it's even possible for such  
ballot-tampering software to trick authorized technicians into  
thinking that everything is working fine, an illusion you couldn't  
pull off with pre-electronic systems. "If Diebold had set out to  
build a system as insecure as they possibly could, this would be it,"  
says Avi Rubin, a Johns Hopkins University computer-science professor  
and elections-security expert.

Diebold Election Systems spokesperson David Bear says Hursti's  
findings do not represent a fatal vulnerability in Diebold  
technology, but simply note the presence of a feature that allows  
access to authorized technicians to periodically update the software.  
If it so happens that someone not supposed to use the machine-or an  
election official who wants to put his or her thumb on the scale of  
democracy-takes advantage of this fast track to fraud, that's not  
Diebold's problem. "[Our critics are] throwing out a 'what if' that's  
premised on a basis of an evil, nefarious person breaking the law,"  
says Bear.

[…]

<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12888600/site/newsweek/>

When you need to communicate, Ink Works!
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When you need to communicate, Ink Works!
http://www.inkworkswell.com
+1 (727) 942-9255


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