Response to recent disinformation - please circulate

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2004 15:35:40 -0500
From: Avi Rubin <rubin () jhu edu>
Subject: Response to recent disinformation - please circulate
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>

It has been brought to my attention that some people are taking recent comments
of mine about my experience as an election judge out of context and 
misrepresenting
my position. In particular, I was told that someone said I had reversed my 
position
on the security of the Diebold electronic voting machines. I would like to 
make it
very clear that nothing could be further from the truth. After serving as 
an election
judge in a precinct that used the Diebold Accuvote TS voting machines in 
the March 2
primary in Baltimore County, I now believe even more strongly than before 
that these
machines are fundamentally flawed.

Those who incorrectly attribute comments to me about my position on the 
security
and reliability of these machines by referencing my statements written after I
returned home on March 2 would have done well to reference my entire statement.
In particular, quoting from my original text:

"I continue to believe that the Diebold voting machines represent a huge 
threat to our
democracy. I fundamentally believe that we have thrown our trust in the 
outcome of our
elections in the hands of a handful of companies (Diebold, Sequoia, ES&S, 
Hart) who are in a
position to control the final outcomes of our elections. I also believe 
that the outcomes
can be changed without any knowledge by election judges or anyone else. 
Furthermore,
meaningful recounts are impossible with these machines."

I do not see how that could be used to honestly state that I have reversed 
my position.
In my report about election day, I did acknowledge that I now had a better 
understanding
of some of the threats, and of the dozen or so attacks and security flaws 
that we pointed
out in our report, that perhaps one of them might be harder to carry out in 
practice, but
I also described new and more serious attacks that I discovered by working 
as a judge.
My full accounting is still available unchanged on the web at
http://avirubin.com/judge.html

Anybody who states that I have reversed my position on this matter is being 
willfullly
dishonest, or is at best misinformed. I have never stated anything to that 
effect, and in fact, every
public and private statement I have made since our original reporton July 
23 has been consistent
with the position that the Diebold electronic voting machines are a danger 
to our democracy.

Avi Rubin

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