My experience as an Election Judge in Baltimore County by Avi Rubin

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.avirubin.com/judge.html

It is now 10:30 pm, and I have been up since 5 a.m. this morning.  
Today, I served as an election judge in the primary election, and I am
writing down my experience now, despite being extremely tired, as
everything is fresh in my mind, and this was one of the most
incredible days in my life.

I first became embroiled in the current national debate on evoting
security when Dan Wallach of Rice University and I, along with
Computer Scientist Yoshi Kohno and my Ph.D. student Adam Stubblefield
released a report analyzing the software in Diebold's Accuvote voting
machines.

Although there were four of us on the project, perhaps because I was
the most senior of the group, the report became widely associate with
me, and people began referring to it as the "Hopkins report" or even
in some cases the "Rubin report". I became the target of much
criticism from Maryland and Georgia election officials who were deeply
committed to these machines, and of course, of the vendor. The biggest
criticism that I received was that I am an academic scientist and that
academics do not "know siccum" about elections, as Doug Lewis from the
Election Center put very eloquently.

While I dispute many of the claims that computer scientists working on
e-voting security analysis are deficient in their knowledge of
elections, I realized that there was only one way to stifle this
criticism, and at the same time to perform a civic duty. I volunteered
to become an election judge in Baltimore County. The first step was to
get signed up. I filled out a form at a local grocery store and waited
for a call from the Baltimore County Board of Elections. The call
never came. So, I called up the board and spoke with the head of
elections and found out that there was a mandatory training session a
couple of days later. I got on to the list for the training, and I
attended. There, I learned that my entire county would be voting with
Diebold Accuvote TS machines, the very one that we had analyzed in our
report. It was an eery feeling as I trained for 2 hours on every
aspect of using the machine and teaching others how to use them.  
Afterwards, I received a certificate signed by the board of elections
and became a qualified judge. I was supposed to receive a phone call
within a few days assigning me to a precinct, but I did not. So, I
called up the board of elections and spoke with the same woman, who
assigned me to a precinct at a church in Timonium, MD, about 15
minutes from my house.

I reported to my precinct at 5:45 a.m. this morning. Introductions
began, and I immediately realized that it would not be a normal day.  
There are two head judges, one from each party. There were also seven
other judges. The head judges were Marie (R) and Jim (D). Both of them
mentioned that they read about me in the paper that morning, and were
pretty cold towards me. It turns out that the Baltimore Sun ran a
story today about my being an election judge. In there, I'm quoted as
saying that the other judges in my training were in the "grandparent
category" with respect to their age. My colleagues for the day, who
were in that category as well, did not appreciate the barb and were
ready to spar with me.

[...]



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