Discussion about U.S. Voting Machine Flaws
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Voting Machine Flaws
Recent (August) articles and videos by Scientific American, The
Associated Press, CBS News, The NY Times, The Washington Post, a top
Republican cyber-security expert, and others, discuss the flaws of
U.S. voting machines.
These articles and videos are particularly important because our
national press has not until now diligently informed us on election
integrity and voting system issues.
Of specific interest are:
1. the videos by Republican security expert Stephen Spoonamore,
2. articles by Ph.D. computer scientists rebutting the recent book
"Electronic Elections" by e-voting proponents,
3. *Today's* CNN's Lou Dobbs report that Diebold/Premier has publicly
admitted that its machines drop votes from entire touch-screen memory
cards and has warned all jurisdictions that use its machines of the
"bug" that can lose hundreds of votes in each county. (Lou Dobbs
video should be publicly available on U-Tube by tomorrow.)
NOTE: Any very close recent election outcomes implemented
Diebold/Premier touchscreen voting machines are in doubt.
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Please read these articles or view these videos and support strong,
scientific post-election auditing procedures.
RECENT ARTICLES:
AP & USA Today: States throw out costly electronic voting machines
Aug. 19, 2008
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jej6XIWrQn6-gw5O5bJa1ELx78DgD92LK3E00
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jej6XIWrQn6-gw5O5bJa1ELx78DgD92LLDO00
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-08-19-electronic-voting_N.htm
Scientific American: Planning to E-Vote? Read This First, Aug. 18, 2008
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=electronic-election-day
CBS News: Voting Machine Doubts Linger, Aug. 16, 2008
Concerns Over Vulnerability Of Electronic Machines Sending Many States
Back To Paper Ballots
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/08/16/eveningnews/main4355733.shtml
NY Times: Officials Say Flaws at Polls Will Remain in November, Aug. 16,
2008
[NOTE: Officials in two states admit that their voting machines are
not accurately casting or counting votes]
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/16/us/politics/16vote.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/16/us/politics/16vote.html
Washington Post: Ohio Voting Machines Contained Programming Error That
Dropped Votes, Aug. 21, 2008 [Note: States like MD with paperless
voting cannot detect these errors in their vote counts using audits.
States like OH and UT can detect the dropped votes *if* they do valid
audits (Utah does not. Ohio does)]
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/08/21/ohio_voting_machines_contained.html
Company acknowledges voting machine error, Aug. 21, 2008
http://www.ohio.com/news/ap?articleID=688274&c=y
Did Washington waste millions on faulty voting machines? Aug 15, 2008
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/election2008/story/48508.html
Voting System Standards: All Form and No Substance, June 12, 2008
http://washburnsworld.blogspot.com/2008/06/voting-system-standards-all-form-and-no.html
Opinion - Help Our Veterans Vote, Aug. 11, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/11/opinion/11bysiewicz.html?_r=2&ref=opinion&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Editorial - The Right to Vote, Aug. 9, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/opinion/09sat1.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Editorial - A Bad Electronic Voting Bill, Aug. 3, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/opinion/03sun2.html?_r=3&ref=opinion&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
States seek workarounds for e-voting systems
http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/803
Veterans focus of Dem voting law reform
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12624.html
How do you compare security across voting systems? Aug. 19, 2008 by
Dan Wallach, Rice U. Computer Scientist [This paper refutes the work
of two political scientists Thad Hall (U. of Utah) and Michael Alvarez
(CA IT) (http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8641.html) who support
e-voting and claim that "paper ballots would fail to meet the
standards to which e-voting is held." The computer scientists'
conclusion is that "Of voting technologies presently on the market and
certified for use in most states, precinct-based optical scanning
systems appear to have the best resistance to security attacks, based
on our complexity analysis." ]
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1367
http://accurate-voting.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/risk-eval-final.pdf
http://www.josephhall.org/nqb2/index.php/2008/08/16/nakedeval
definitions:
O(1) attacks where one or a handful of attackers can change an
arbitrary number of ballots
O(P) attacks where you may need to get all P poll workers involved if
you want to tamper with N ballots
O(N) attacks that require you to bribe each voter individually
States rush to dump touch-screen voting systems, Aug. 21, 2008
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080820-states-rush-to-dump-touchscreen-voting-systems.html
Vote fraud, crumbling democracy's bedrock, Aug. 21, 2008
http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20080822_Vote_fraud__crumbling_democracy_s_bedrock.html
RECENT VIDEOS:
Republican Cyber Security expert, Stephen Spoonamore, says Diebold is
stealing elections (see segment #3):
Segment #1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAyEfovA404
Segment #2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTBLfgos5b8&feature=related
Segment #3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzKbigGoMoo&feature=related
Segment #4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vNvweInGFs&feature=related
Segment #5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX8fRwsTpoQ&feature=related
U-Tube UNCOUNTED CLIPS:
Each week until the election UNCOUNTED will release a clip because
people need to see stories that will motivate them to stand up and
help save our democracy.
WEEK 7: The Electronic Voting Machine Hokey Pokey (You Put Your Right
Vote In. It Spits Your Wrong Vote Out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqsL-KNiYJ8
Week 6: The Sleeping Media http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdpclsWYomM
Week 5: Playing to Win with a Full Deck of Race Cards
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-irWqvhpDo
Week 4: The Athan Gibbs Story http://youtube.com/watch?v=c8ewsDxXQD4
Week 3: [Utah discovery] Diebold's Disreputable Distinction is Dead On
Deserved http://youtube.com/watch?v=zwHX7zDVkuc
Week 2: Miller Dollar Programmer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7tjnuG-l6g
Week 1: The Ballad of Steve Heller
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkhXzW32Rrs
TO OBTAIN A COPY OF THE FILM UNCOUNTED: http://www.uncountedthemovie.com
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LWV, US links you to your State information. http://www.VOTE411.org
Check to be certain that you are registered to vote about a month
prior to the election.
Omega Group
Greg Gordon, McClatchy Newspapers: "Disclosure of an election computer
glitch that could drop ballot totals for entire precincts is stirring
new worries that an unofficial laboratory testing system failed for
years to detect an array of flaws in $1.5 billion worth of voting
equipment sold nationwide since 2003. Texas-based Premier Elections
Solutions last week alerted at least 1,750 jurisdictions across the
country that special precautions are needed to address the problem in
tabulation software affecting all 19 of its models dating back a
decade. Voting experts reacted skeptically to the company's assertion
that election workers' routine crosschecks of ballot totals would have
spotted any instances where its servers failed to register some
precinct vote totals when receiving data from multiple memory cards."
http://www.truthout.org/article/warning-voting-machines-reveals-oversight-failure