How They Could Steal the Election This Time and response

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah () shipwright com>
Date: July 31, 2004 4:03:41 PM EDT
To: cryptography () metzdowd com
Subject: How They Could Steal the Election This Time

<http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20040816&s=dugger>

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http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040816&s=dugger

How They Could Steal the Election This Time

by RONNIE DUGGER

[from the August 16, 2004 issue]


AND from Mike Shamos who was quoted in the article

"I sent the following to The Nation today:"

To the Editor:

Ronnie Dugger's article ("How They Could Steal The Election This Time,"  
Aug. 16) contains an error in its very first sentence and things only  
go downhill from there.  He claims that voting system vendors could  
program the machines "to invisibly falsify the outcomes."  There is no  
basis at all for asserting, or even believing, that such a thing is  
possible.  It is pure science fiction to dream that it can be done  
"invisibly."  Machines are tested, and if tampering has occurred it can  
be found.  If the machines have been altered, then forensic examination  
can detect the alteration.  He fails to mention that DRE machines have  
been used in the United States for over 25 years without a single  
verified incident in which the outcome of any election was altered  
through tampering.

Later, Mr. Dugger misquotes me as having said that "computerized  
vote-counting is highly vulnerable to fraud."  I wrote many years ago,  
and still  believe, that punched-card voting, not DRE voting, was  
vulnerable to fraud.

His most basic error, however, is in urging that paper systems are  
safer than electronic ones.  Since 1852, the New York Times has  
published over 4000 articles on paper ballot fraud in the United  
States.  That works out to about one article every 12 days for the past  
152 years.  Paper is not safe.  It may be familiar, but it is the  
principal tool of election fraud in this country and always has been.   
The answer is not to return to paper but to implement safeguards to  
assure the public that the sorts of machinations Mr. Dugger imagines  
are not possible in practice.
________________________________________________________________________ 
__________
Michael I. Shamos
Distinguished Career Professor, Language Technologies Institute
Director, Universal Library
Co-Director, Electronic Commerce degree program
4515 Newell-Simon Hall, Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
412-268-8193 (office phone) 412-268-6298 (office fax) 412-681-8398  
(home phone)
Home page: http://euro.ecom.cmu.edu/people/faculty/mshamos

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