Re: The great Sarasota undervote mystery

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Paul_Ferguson () trendmicro com
Date: May 3, 2007 8:19:03 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: RE: [IP] The great Sarasota undervote mystery


Hi Dave,

For IP...

> From: Stephen Unger <unger () cs columbia edu>
> Date: May 3, 2007 5:54:37 PM EDT
> To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
> Subject: The great Sarasota undervote mystery
>
> There have been several studies of why so many people in Sarasota
> County went to the polls and then appeared not to have voted in a
> hotly contested congressional race. Was this a boycott? Did they not
> notice the race because of bad ballot design? Was this due to a
> program bug or hardware design error in the e-voting system? Was it
> the result of a deliberate effort to corrupt the system--that may not
> have worked  quite as planned? In any event, this case illustrates a
> number of ways e-voting systems can go astray without leaving much of
> a trail.
>
> A report of an investigation of the source code by a high powered team
> was recently published, followed by a criticism of that report.  The
> problem remains unresolved, tho so far the courts have upheld the
> official verdict.  I just posted my own analysis at
> http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~unger/myBlog/endsandmeansblog.html

For what its worth, it looks like Florida is scrapping their
touch-screen electronic voting machines altogether, in favor of optical
scanners for manual voter cards:

[snip]

In a major shift on e-voting that could ripple to other states, the
Florida Legislature today voted to replace nearly all of the state's
touch-screen voting systems with optical scan devices.

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who initially offered up the bill mandating
a change in e-voting systems earlier this year, applauded the Florida
Legislature for acting after the state House approved the measure. It
had already been OK'd by the state Senate.

The law mandates the replacement of touch-screen systems with optical
scan devices and also moves up the date of Florida's presidential
primary to the last Tuesday in January. In 2008, that would be Jan. 29.

[snip]

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&;
articleId=9018595

Cheers,

- ferg

--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
Network Architect, Office of the CTO
Trend Micro, Inc., San Jose, CA
paul_ferguson () trendmicro com

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