Election commission is challenged to explain voting machine accuracy

[mopinko]

http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/napervillesun/news/mego/1060604,6_4_NA17_MEGOCOLUMN_S1.article

July 17, 2008Recommend (1)

By Bill Mego


"With all the mechanical improvements they have in the way of adding machines, and counting machines, they can't seem to invent anything to take the place of the old Political mode of counting - two for me and one for you. More people have been elected between Sundown and Sunup, than ever were elected between Sunup and Sundown." Indeed, when Will Rogers wrote that, we could not mechanize vote fraud. But now that we have things like Premier/ Diebold touch screen voting machines, votes can be stolen whether it's night or day.



Of course, it's not the machine that steals them.



Diebold machines are, as our election commission proclaims, fairly accurate. And we do not, in fact, know that any votes have ever been stolen electronically in DuPage County. All we know is that they have been stolen in other places and that, if they were to be stolen here, the design of the machines guarantees that the theft would be absolutely undetectable.



The criticisms that have been leveled at the DuPage County Election Commission have had more to do with the appearance of impropriety. They've been about some members' close personal relationships with both the manufacturer and distributor of the voting machines, for example, and the kind of cross fertilization that, frankly, is not unusual in "old boy" networks.



There's nothing in the commission's charter, however, that mandates objectivity or that forbids doing business with cronies. The commission simply certifies election judges, registers voters, and redistricts precincts. In short, it conducts elections, and its only responsibility to the people of DuPage County is to ensure that every vote is counted, and counted fairly.



Were we using only paper ballots that could be kept indefinitely, so they could be sampled after the election, or if the state Legislature had mandated touch screen voting machines with open source software, nobody would have to worry about his or her vote.



But we use machines with unnecessarily complex, poorly written, proprietary software that are physically much less secure than ATMs made by the same company. Some of these machines can be secretly, and undetectably, reprogrammed in seconds by people with limited technical skills.



I have been assured that everything is fine and that the commission's critics are suffering from paranoia. Perhaps, but in response to increased concerns from readers, I would like to invite the election commission to allay our fears and tell us, either in a special Sun column or in a meeting with me that I will discuss in this space, exactly what measures they are taking to deal with the dangers posed by this new, and as yet unrefined, technology.



DuPage voters deserve to know, for example, whether the machines are physically secured before elections, how security seals are employed, if memory cards can be used to reprogram the machines or deliver computer viruses, and how a voter can verify whether the machine has accurately recorded his or her vote.



Many of the races this fall will be uncharacteristically close, and may be well within the 5 percent that experts claim can be undetectably shifted by voting machine fraud. The faith of many of our citizens in their government and its institutions has already been badly shaken by the events of recent years. We need to start restoring it right now.




Bill Mego's column is published each Thursday. Contact him at [e-mail].

[tofubo]

1. the accuracy of the vote in a democracy is paramount, EVERYTHING else comes second

http://rawstory.com//news/2008/Cybersecurity_expert_raises_allegations_of_2004_0717.html