must read: Electronic Voting problems around the World - Why India should ban them?

[Hindu Human Rights]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Satya D <hita...@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 12:22 AM
Subject: Electronic Voting problems around the World - Why India should ban them?


The following section taken from a paper by 'Open Rights Group' based in UK:
http://www.openrightsgroup.org/wp-content/uploads/org-evoting-briefing-pack-final.pdf

e-Voting tales of woe from around the world

Electronic voting has been introduced in many countries worldwide, only for
serious doubts to be raised about the security, accuracy, reliability and verifiability
of electronic elections.

Italy has announced its intention to no longer pilot e-voting methods. Making
the announcement, Italian Minister of the Interior Guiulano Amato said that
“We decided to stop the electronic voting machine … It will be the triumph of
our ancestors … Let’s stick to voting and counting physically because [it is]
less easy to falsify.”9

Security researchers in The Netherlands have discovered serious flaws in a
model of e-voting machine widely used by the Dutch government and purchased
by the Irish. The flaws, which included being able to remotely detect
how a vote was cast from the machine’s radio emissions, were confirmed
by the Dutch Intelligence and Security Service. Subsequently a government
review led to the withdrawal from elections of e-voting machines from a competing
supplier.10

The Republic of Ireland has a moratorium on its e-voting machines after an
Independent Commission, created after repeated cross-party criticism,
uncovered serious technical and procedural flaws. One telling finding from
the Commission’s second report was that “the testing of the [e-voting] system
as a whole carried out to date, as well as the investigation, analysis and independent
testing and certification of its individual components, [was] insufficient
to provide a secure basis for the use of the system at elections
in Ireland.”11 According to Freedom of Information releases, Ireland spent
€110.4 million on e-voting between 2002 and May 2004.12

The Canadian province of Quebec has an indefinite moratorium on the use of
its e-voting machines following the investigation of troubled municipal elections.
Delivering his report on e-voting, Quebec’s Chief Electoral Officer said
that e-voting systems “[do] not offer sufficient guarantees of transparency
and security to ensure the integrity of the vote.”13

The United States, which has been a pioneer in using technology for elections,
has a long history of problems with e-voting, some of which raise doubts as
to the legitimacy of results. In 2004, a group of experts issued a report critical
of a planned internet voting system for US soldiers overseas, resulting in the
project being cancelled. They wrote that “the vulnerabilities … cannot be
fixed by design changes or bug fixes to [the system]. These vulnerabilities are
fundamental in the architecture of the internet and of the PC hardware and
software that is ubiquitous today. They cannot all be eliminated for the foreseeable
future without some unforeseen radical breakthrough.”14

In November 2006, America’s influential National Institute of Standards &
Technology stated that electronic voting machines “in practical terms cannot
be made secure.”15 This is a view shared in prominent journals by leading
computer science and elections academics around the world.

Doubts over the veracity of election results in the United States — including
the 2000 Presidential count in Florida, the 2004 Presidential count in Ohio
and the 2006 mid-term elections —have all revolved around failings or manipulations
of e-voting systems. By January 2007 one Congressional seat was
still in limbo due to 18,000 questionable votes cast with an e-voting system16.

The flimsy e-voting certification process in the US has also been called into
question after one of the key testing labs was secretly suspended in 200617.
These international experiences have shown that when electronic and software
technologies are introduced into the election process, significant and
worrying problems arise.

e-Voting is a black box system

Voting technology is what is known as a ‘black box’: voters, candidates and
even officials cannot see the inner the workings of the machines. Only a small
group of technology experts has any hope of understanding how the election
is being conducted and counted. Because the votes are invisible, made up
of ones and zeroes, it is extremely difficult even for experts to be certain that
what vendors claim is happening really is happening.

Manipulating bits in a computer is much easier than copying paper ballots,
so there is potential for undetectable vote manipulation on a scale never seen
before: a hacker could hide a tiny piece of code in the voting software that
could invisibly, but significantly, modify an election’s results. But putting aside
undetectable hackers, vote stealing and other manipulations, we must also
remember that these systems are built by ordinary, fallible people.

Like all computers, e-voting systems go wrong and usually do so on election
day because this is the only time they are used. And the problems that come
to light are not trivial. There have been cases where selecting one candidate
stored a vote for another, or where the system failed completely, depriving
people of their right to vote. Problems are often not discovered until the election
is over, when it is impossible to say how the votes should have been cast.

Because the votes are stored as bits, there is nothing for election officials to
study when problems occur, as there is with paper ballots. There is nothing
to audit except some memory cards, which cannot shed any light upon what
happened but can only provide a final tally. There is no way for the voter, candidates
or officials to know whether the voter’s intent was accurately stored
and then correctly counted by the e-voting system. Everything happens
inside the black box.

With a paper ballot the voter can see their mark and has immediate feedback.
That mark is stored, unchangeable, in the ballot box until it is time to be
counted. If a recount is required, that ballot can be examined a second time.
It would be trivial for an e-voting system to report that it has stored a vote for
Ms X when in fact Mr Y gains one vote in the memory card. Under these circumstances,
a recount is no help, as the computer adds the same numbers
up again and will arrive at the same result each time. With paper, new people
can be called in to count and judges can debate each ballot paper, but with
e-voting the election is nothing but the numbers on the screen.

These fears are not just theoretical. Activists in the United States worked with
a Finnish computer security expert and a respected election official in Florida
to show how manipulation of a memory card before an election started
would allow results counted by an optical vote scanner to be altered without
trace. The successful manipulation is shown as the conclusion of Hacking
Democracy, a film documenting the many problems with e-voting based
elections in the United States18.

References (more in the article link given in the beginning)

9    See: http://www.jasonkitcat.com/?be_id=320
10 See:  http://www.wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/English
11 Source: http://www.cev.ie/htm/press/press040706.htm
12 Source: http://fiasco.ie/evoting/resources/CostofElectronicvotingAsOfMay.pdf
13 Source: http://www.electionsquebec.qc.ca/en/nouvelleDetail.asp?id=2153&typeN=2
14 Source: http://servesecurityreport.org/paper.pdf
15 Source: http://vote.nist.gov/DraftWhitePaperOnSIinVVSG2007-20061120.pdf
16 House Seat Hangs by a Byte, Kim Zetter, Wired News (11 Jan 2007)
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,72452-0.html
17 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/washington/04voting.html
18 Hacking Democracy, http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/hackingdemocracy/

On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 2:06 PM, Satya D <hita...@gmail.com> wrote:

All recognise EVM's are a serious problem for free and fair elections, but from Andhra Pradesh perspective, we need to look at some factors that are very revealing:

1) How can Andhra Pradesh Congress Party declare so precisely how many central seats they are going to win so consistenly for last six months and the elections results match exactly to the last digit?   

For e.g, Six months ago YSR mentioned Congress will win 230 in state assembly and 33 in Centre.   One month before  he said 180 in state assembly and 33 in center.   Soon after elections, his closest aide Mr. Lagadapati Rajagopal said they will win 156 in state and 33 center.  The center matched the outcome exactly for last six months and state matched with the last predictions almost exactly.  See the links below.

News coverage of declaration of elections results by Congress soon after elections (before results announced)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFs-D2p_goo

(Note: Detailed AP state elections data is in Telugu at
http://www.eenadu.net/archives/archive-17-5-2009/story.asp?qry1=1&reccount=40)

No where in history we know, a party could predict an election outcome so precisely.  Even in US where there is elaborate analysis can any news agency, Pew Studies etc could predict out come of election, leave alone one but both state and central so precisely?    How can this be possible from six month prior to elections a ruling party predict the outcome of elections exact to last digit?  Especially when the race is 3 way and the outcome is so unpredictable?

This only show that the elections results are predetermined. Could EVM's played a role into that?  Let us look into some more pointers.

2) EVMs are banned in Netherlands,  Ireland (after spending 51 million pounds),  Germany (considered e-voting unconstitutional),  Italy.   Dr. Swamy once mentioned how he demonstrated many years to election commissioner  with a MIT Professor (his relation) how easy it is to manipulate the EVM's.   Please see attached powerpoint presentation.

3) EVM's are developed in ECIL in Hyderabad.   A rumor going around is Mr. N. Prasad head of ECIL is a Christian who is a friend of Christian evangelist Andhra CM YSR.

4) Are EVM's preprogrammed?  Some pointers.  Karimnagar and Nizamabad are well known backward districts of Andhra Pradesh.   Each district have 2 seats each for center and all 4 are won by Congress.  Now, in both districts combined out of 22 state assembly seats, only 4 assembly seats  (out of 22) are won by Congress.  How can it be possible the uneducated class of people would distinguish which party they would give their vote between State and Center?

5) Are EVM's preprogrammed?  In Pulavendu constituency  it is believed to be constituted by 80% of Kapu Vote which should go in  a big way for Mr. Chiranjeevi but he lost that election.  Is it to cut Mr. Chiranjeevi to size and send him a message?  There are several such examples.

6)  Andhra Pradesh is a cash cow for Congress where every Govt.  license is believed to require paying 10% to Congress.   There is so much news/data on the high level of corruption (as well as large scale looting of temples).  This is a state which Congress would not want to lose and Congress is committed to win under any circumstances (hook or crook).

7) Add to this factor,  Andhra CM is  known to be a goonda that is known  from his rise from Pulavendu constituency to Cuddapah district to Andhra Pradesh state where he has accumulated great record for notorious criminal activities.  He is unscrupulous in nature and will go to any lengths to get desired objective.

What can be done?

Will the parties come together and take a stand against EVM and declare that they will not participate even one more election until we go back to paper process, like many other countries did?

Will the parties like TDP, Praja Rajyam, Communists and even BJP contest the seemingly blatantly rigged Andhra Pradesh elections before 30 days (since election announcement) runs out (in 3 or 4 days)?

What is at stake here is democracy, people's will to elect their leaders?   It is what the country fought for many years and sacrificed their lives.    Will we drag the country back to Emergency era and perhaps even backward to imperialism.

Regards,
Satya