Avi Rubin said it best in op-ed in Baltimore Sun right before the election

[flpoljunkie]

Avi Rubin is a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University. Closing paragraphs in an article worth reading in its entirety.

http://www.avirubin.com/vote/op-ed.html

Elections, by their nature, are adversarial.In a successful election, the loser should be as convinced as the winner that the outcome is legitimate, despite the potentially strong party loyalties of the people running the mechanics of the process.

One of our safeguards in the United States is that members of the two principal parties are present to watch each other through every facet of an election. The utility of this security measure is diminished when the votes are invisible and the counting is virtual. DREs reduce the transparency of the voting process, and traditional checks and balances become ineffective.

Even if, on Wednesday, this election appears to have been a success, there will be no way of knowing for sure whether the will of the people was accomplished.

And even if there is no problem Tuesday, that does not imply that the election was secure - only that no one chose that day to exploit the insecurity. If an apparent success in November leads to greater adoption of fully electronic voting in the future, then subsequent elections will be even more vulnerable, providing increased incentive to attackers and, at the same time, more avenues for attack.

For voters to have confidence in the election process, it should be as transparent as possible. When technology that is inherently opaque is used in elections, peoples' confidence in the process will be justifiably shaken.

There are ways in which DREs provide an apparent advantage over butterfly ballots and hanging chads. But there are other ways in which these systems, implemented without voter-approved paper ballots that allow meaningful recounts, are potentially much worse.

Our goal should be voting technology that is beyond reproach. That goal may never be fully attainable, but we must do better than this. The foundation of our democracy is at stake, and thus, ultimately, so is our freedom.

[flpoljunkie]

1. Rubin says in C-Span interview there is NO evidence to obtain in DRE's and

that the software programmer can write the program to come out however they want--and it is undectable. We just had a "faith-based election." This cannot stand in a nation that considers itself to be a shining beacon of democracy.

Link to C-Span interview: http://www.avirubin.com/vote/

Scroll down to Washington Journal, November 13th... there are three segments

[Quakerfriend]

2. So well said by Dr. Rubin

I have been hoping that C. Arnebeck will use Dr. Rubins expertise as part of his case!

[scottxyz]

3. Why not just use carbon-paper ballots

Put one in a red box, one in a blue box, and one in a yellow box.

Repub officials count the red box, Dem officials count the blue box, and an independent observer counts the yellow box - observed and videotaped and broadcast with the same loving care we dedicate to picking lottery balls out of a barrel.

Publish the results AT THE PRECINCT. Total the precincts nationwide. Done.

Would cost less and be faster than the current mess. AND IT WOULD BE MORE BELIEVABLE (transparent).

Screw computers. (I'm a computer programmer myself, for what it's worth.)

[leftchick]

4. Thank you for re-posting this...

I read this with so much dread the Sunday before the fraud...very prescient Mr. Rubin!

[enough]

5. This is so important.

The basic fact is that with electronic voting, there is no way, ever, to know whether the election was honest or not.

Nobody could possibly prove that Bush (or Kerry) actually won the election.

Essentially, there is no election.

[FreepFryer]

6. "On the spectrum of terrible to very good, we are sitting at terrible."

From his words:

"On the spectrum of terrible to very good, we are sitting at terrible. Not only have the vendors not implemented security safeguards that are possible, they have not even correctly implemented the ones that are easy. If I had more time I would debunk the myth of the security of the so-called triple redundancy in the Diebold machines. I would explain the limitations of logic and accuracy testing in an adversarial setting, I would explain how easy it would be for a malicious programmer to rig the election with today's DREs , and I would describe the seriousness of the security flaws that we and others have found in the Diebold machines. These are all things that I could have done and would have been happy to do, before anybody started purchasing and using these DREs. But nobody asked."

"Since our study came out, three other major studies ... all cited serious security vulnerabilities in DREs. RABA, which is closely allied with the National Security Agency, called for a "pervasive rewrite" of Diebold's code. Yet, the vendors, and many election officials ... continue to insist that the machines are perfectly secure. I cannot fathom the basis for their claims. I do not know of a single computer security expert who would testify that these machines are secure. I personally know dozens of computer security experts who would testify that they are not."

(Source: http://avirubin.com/eac.pdf)

[Land Shark]

7. Here's my executive summary on fraud evidence

I'm too new to start a new thread. Can ssomeone do it for me???? --Land Shark

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

• Counties such as Snohomish County Washington that run parallel voting technologies on Election day over the same precincts and the same races are useful for isolating any effect voting technology may have on patterns of voting.
• Touch screen systems, controversial for their proprietary counting software that can not be verified, claim as a positive “product feature” the reduction or elimination of undervotes, or persons not voting for any candidate in a race.
• Evidence from New Mexico suggests that undervoting, at least in heavily minority districts, was very high, an average of four times higher than national averages with undervoting for President exceeding 9% in many minority precincts.
• This strongly suggests that either electronic machines do not actually reduce undervoting substantially, or else something is wrong with the machines in New Mexico, or both.
• Undervoting rates in Snohomish County were quite low, but numerous persons reported that touch screens would appear pre-voted, or else would select the Republican box when the Democratic candidate’s box was pressed either with a finger or the stylus provided. Problems of switched voting or machines freezing up appeared in over 50 polling locations out of approximately 148 total.
• Statistical analysis shows high correlations between reported voting irregularities and high Republican voting results.
• Statistical analysis of machines that recently had their CPUs repaired shows a propensity for Republican voting that is present but weak on the individual level but strong at the polling location where the machines were placed.
• Sequoia touch screens are required to have their power cords daisy chained, forming a de facto network that third parties can use to tap into the machines or have the machines communicate among each other.
• Snohomish county had the highest election day increase in vote for Republican governor candidate Dino Rossi relative to absentee voters, while other nearby counties had either smaller increases or election day actually favored the Democrat Christine Gregoire.
• Election day voting in Snohomish County is not like paper voting for Republicans and Democrats which forms a bell curve with noise, but instead forms a smooth twin peak curve, suggesting different forces acted on the electronic vote relative to the paper vote.
• Simple mechanisms exist for multiple voting or hacking the Sequoia touch screen machines by single individuals, and they are further identified in the paper.
• Machines with repair histories within two weeks of the election or exhibiting problems on election day with observed vote switching, prevoted ballots, or freezing up performed better than the average Republican gain in the governor’s race on election day (of just under 5%) in 46 out of 58 polling locations, and did better than the absentee results for the same precincts in 56 out of 58 polling locations. In the remaining two instances, electronic results were roughly equal to absentee results.
• The average of the 58 polling places reporting vote switching, freeze-ups, or repairs within two weeks of the election was 11.58% more favorable to Republican Dino Rossi than absentee voters did, and averaged 10.8% more votes than Gregoire on election day, while Rossi’s overall spread among all electronic voters at all polling locations was under 5%.
• Given the coincidence of observed vote switching behavior doing this very thing with actual precinct results reporting enhanced Republican outcomes relative to absentee paper ballots, the probability is that Democratic votes and/or undervotes are being assigned improperly to Republican candidates and contrary to at least some voters’ intent, and forensic analysis of the machines along with their impoundment is necessary to rule this out.
• Even though evidence of fraud exists here, the parallel voting technologies and recordkeeping are unusually good in Washington state, making investigation somewhat easier.
• Citizens should not have the burden of proving fraud, it is our government that has the burden of proving the election was transparent, fair and clean from the perspective even of the loser, because the continued vitality of democratic government depends upon the election loser’s acceptance that the loss occurred through a fair and democratic process.
• The security of our elections should be an important part of protecting democracy and our country, yet no one has an incentive to identify risks and problems with our elections so that they can be corrected.
• Sequoia machines similar to those in Snohomish County, Washington were used in all of Nevada, almost all of New Mexico, and four counties in Florida. Problems similar in nature to those discussed here were reported on electronic machines in Ohio.
• Although free and independent testing is badly needed, the authors of this paper have been told in writing that they will be allowed no testing of the Sequoia machines without Sequoia’s express permission.

[roseBudd]

8. Even punch cards are counted in an opaque manner, by tabulation

software. The chances of punch cards being hand counted and fraud discovered is very low.