Andy Or Other Experts: Can There Be Adequate Safeguards Over DREs?

[truckin]

I am scheduled to testify on Monday 2/14/05 in CT to support proposed bill No. 55 which would require a VVPB for all future elections in CT. My testimony deals with the meaning of the VVPB and why that specific language is so important and to also explain why back-up like audit trails and paper receipts used by DREs are not adequate safeguards over voting systems.

My question is this. What if a DRE system was used that generated a numbered paper receipt that went to the voter and was also kept in the precinct? For example, the first voter would get a receipt that would say he voted for Kerry and his receipt would be marked with a 1. An exact copy of the receipt, also marked with the number 1, would be kept in the precinct and used for recounts or audits and be made public. The voter could then see that his ballot really went for the candidate he voted for after the fact and these receipts could be used for meaningful recounts and to verify the accuracy of the machines.

The only shortcoming this system would have verse an optical scan system with VVPBs is that if a voter's receipt did not match up with the receipt kept by the precinct, there would be no records to base the election on and a re-vote would have to take place. When VVPBs were used with an optical scan system, if a problem was found with the machines, the VVPBs could be used to determine the election and a re-vote would not be needed.

Are there any other benefits of the VVPBs and optical scan systems over the DREs if this system were employed? Please let me know what I am missing and what other advantages VVPBs and optical scan have over DREs in this scenario. Thanks in advance to all who respond.

[hedda_foil]

1. What you propose is illegal.

The problem with giving a receipt to the voter that s/he can take out of the polling place is that it can be used for vote selling because it also provides proof to the vote buyer that the seller kept his word. Also, a numbered ballot that is tied to a specific voter invalidates the privacy of the vote.

Receipts are worthless. The point of the VVPB is to provide a paper ballot of record, that has been verified as correct by the voter,to be used for manual audits and recounts. The paper ballot alone is just the baseline. Laws regarding robust hand audits of the paper ballots vis a vis the machine record are also necessary in order to ensure that the machine record is accurate. When there is a difference between the hand and machine count, the paper ballot takes precedence.

[truckin]

2. Are you sure that giving a receipt is illegal because of vote selling?

If you are right that blows this plan out of the water and it is the only way that I can think of where DRE's would even be close to optical scan systems in making the process safe. Of course, others may have ideas of how DRE's could be made safe.

[Wilms]

9. If it ain't illegal, it ought to be.

Votes could be sold as easily as Hedda mentioned.

-On edit-

Here's a story about an Ohio election official that didn't get the memo. Unbelievabe!!!

<http://news-register.net/community/story/027202005_com02.asp>


I emailed the editor:

Dear Editor,

I was stunned to read a quote in the article titled, "Optical Scan Voting Reviewed", by Joselyn King.

http://news-register.net/community/story/027202005_com02.asp

Discussing touch screen voting systems the article states;

"The voter then gets to keep the paper ballot "to do whatever they want with it," explained Belmont County Director of Elections William Shubat."

To do whatever they want with it. Really? Then a voter could offer their vote for sale, and use the ballot to collect payment. Not a good idea.

Using computers to tally votes is fraught with security risks.

Creating a "Paper Ballot" that's verified by the voter, and, ideally, used for the actually tally is a much better way to insure the voter's intent. At minimum, the Paper Ballot can be used for mandatory random checks of the machines that produce them, and if a recount is triggered.

Mr. Shubat goes on to predict voting via internet years from now.

Your readers better hope not.

A better use of the internet would be to search a term like "Election Fraud", adding the words "Touch Screen".

The vote they save, may be their own.

[NationalEnquirer]

27. You guys are sharp!

Vote selling.
I wouldn't have even thought of it myself.
I think your objections have alot of merit!

[Land Shark]

28. Yeah but vote selling can easily occur in vote by mail, but doesn't

It is an objection, but we have to keep in mind that no system is foolproof, and one can't stop EVERYTHING, and all we can usually do against even murder is make a law against it (plus some additional security in some places)

If vote selling were a significant problem it would have been discovered in the WA gubernatorial race where every vote it seems is being researched, and voer 2/3 vote by mail. Haven't even heard a rumor on either side of this.

Plus, for now, dissing alternatives too hard may just leave us stuck with DREs since it is so hard to weigh the various factors in each side without studying the issues.

[garybeck]

3. have you seen the video form the credit card fraud expert?

you must see it before you testify. I'll try to dig up the URL

[garybeck]

4. here it is, watch this video

http://www.prolifique.com/itv/GT.wmv

[truckin]

6. Thanks Gary, I will watch it

[BeFree]

5. No faith in DREs

The DREs can not, in any way shape or form, be trusted to count our votes.

The computer experts agree, regular computer users agree, little old ladies agree. That constitutes a NO confidence vote from far too many people for any reasonable person to continue to want to use DREs.

[Land Shark]

7. If vote selling was a significant problem, we would see it

Especially in the hand recount and election contest here in WA state with a 129 vote difference over almost 3 million total votes.

MORE than 2/3 of our ballots are mailed in or dropped off absentees, and what that means is that the vote buyer can buy the ballot, have the voter sign it, and then insure it is voted properly by personally dropping it in the mail. Yet, while lots of problems have been raised in Washington state, vote buying is not one of them even though it would be easy to do with a willing seller.

But all we can do in most cases, even with something such as murder, is make a law against it!!

Actually trying to stop something in advance is extraordinarily difficult. Think of the Pentagon's computers being hacked, or the President's security.

There will be criticisms, fair or unfair, of ANY system. Those with experience in courts or politics know that even the most saintly person can easily be seemingly discredited. The real question is always what system, on balance, is best.

The general test for a good system is that it is understandable not just by experts but by WE THE PEOPLE who created the government, a system that is verifiable by WE THE PEOPLE and not just experts, and a system that can be observed in its processes as being done right the FIRST time by WE THE PEOPLE, so that the expensive burden of a recount is not placed between candidates and justice.

(For example, Chris Gregoire in WA State just barely came up with 700,000 for a hand recount, how would a state auditor or supreme court justice candidate afford this without being beholden, given their smaller donor bases?)

In your testimony I would stress the above policy reasons, the need for a fair system that all will support because none of us know who the future winners and losers of elections will be, and the fact that winners always think the process was fair (think referees in sports and whether you see athletes refusing to take the foul shots from questionable calls!) and losers often but not always think the process unfair. But the correct perspective to adopt since we want to maintain our democracy based on the consent of the governed, is that it is the LOSER's perspective that is most relevant, because they are the ones who may lose confidence in the system, thus undermining the peace and stability of society.

[Land Shark]

8. The video of the credit card fraud "expert"

The thing I don't like about the video is its expert-based faith in ultimate technology.

I can assume, for the sake of argument, that such a perfect technological system is within our reach, even given the higher standards needed and desirable for elections. Even then, it would not be understood independently by the average person to be fair, it can only be taken on faith or be an attitude imposed from above, unless we are all required to take a 2 month tech class followed by a thorough examination of the voting system. (Perhaps a four year computer degree would be required, not just two months?)

I litigate consumer fraud cases. Complicated systems simply can't be understood by average persons, yet are easily "gamed" by those who either run the systems or else have the time and money to invest in learning how to manipulate it. Using technology to prevent manipulation is extraordinarily expensive and difficult, like corporate or Pentagon computer security.

How will small counties afford this kind of stuff???

How will small counties even have an appropriate tech on hand on election day, when techs are getting even more calls from big cities?

Look at the jurisdictions that have DREs. Look at Snohomish County Washington with Sequoia touch screens where over $5 million dollars of touch screens were only able to handle just under 100,000 votes, which is just under 1/3 of the total vote. The rest were paper absentees and provisionals.

I testified before our Washington state legislature that (and got the gallery and reps laughing in recognition of the absurdity of it iall) THE ONLY REASON WE CAN AFFORD DREs IS BECAUSE WE ARE ESSENTIALLY *NOT* USING DREs!! (over two thirds is still on paper)

DREs are done. They are absurd. The emperor has no clothes. And I will be bringing a small army of lawyers to enforce publicly observable vote counting by ejecting secret vote counting machines from our county. See http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x318785

So praise God that the days of DREs are limited, we just don't know how many days are left and how much more money will be wasted before we learn and adjust.

Example: If Iran were to propose that they wished to take over none of america's airports, and none of its economic infrastructure, but only wished the modest request of counting our ballots in SECRECY using black box computers, would that be considered anything but an outrage and, if Iran took our ballot counting by force, a cause for war??

Voting companies can not do by contract with a govt bureaucrat what the people would never knowingly tolerate from Iran, or any other third party. In Washington state, a statute sets forth what our courts have called the "strongest public policy" in the state of Washington, and it says as follows, and I quote:


RCW 42.30.010
Legislative declaration.
The legislature finds and declares that all public commissions, boards, councils, committees, subcommittees, departments, divisions, offices, and all other public agencies of this state and subdivisions thereof exist to aid in the conduct of the people's business. It is the intent of this chapter that their actions be taken openly and that their deliberations be conducted openly.

The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.

<1971 ex.s. c 250 § 1.> (Revised Code of Washington State)


The people lose all control if they cannot see with their own eyes, if they wish, that their votes are counted, either by witnessing it themselves or by representatives, if there are unavoidable space limitation issues....

[demodonkey]

10. Receipts are illegal, for the reason that Hedda mentioned... also...

if voters took them out of the poll, 80-90% would end up in the garbage on the way out the door or as litter in the parking lot. It is AMAZING how much voters throw away on their way out the door (we had a guy toss his Voter Registration Card once, thinking since he had voted he 'didn't need it anymore'.)

[Land Shark]

11. Ilegal where, under what law? State or federal makes a big difference n/t

[Zan_of_Texas]

12. truckin

I wish I had a nickel for every beginner who thought they had this new bright idea of taking numbered receipts home with them, or posting voter numbers on the internet.

I hear this so often, I'm starting to think it's a chant or something.

Here's the thing. Even if the vote buying thing and the confidentiality thing weren't in there --

suppose you-A and voters B C and D all vote, take your receipts, and go home and check to be sure your vote is counted. All of you check, none of you lose your little piece of paper, and it all checks out. Everyone is happy, right?

Wrong. Buster Bad Guy stuffed the ballot box with votes AZ, BZ, CZ and DZ. You have ZERO way of knowing that even though those votes exist, there is no voter attached to them.

Please read Myth Breakers. It's an education in one package.

Ellen Theisen:
"Myth Breakers: Facts about Electronic Elections.
Essential Information for Those Entrusted with Making
Decisions about Election Systems in the United States,"
Second Edition, January 2005
http://www.VotersUnite.org/MB2.pdf

[Wilms]

13. For whom are you testifying?

Youself as a citizen? Or for a group?

[truckin]

14. I will be testifying as part of TrueVoteCT

[Bill Bored]

15. go to this website and READ PLEASE!

Good grief, I'm glad you're doing this, but how was it arranged without you being an expert or something??

<http://wheresthepaper.org>

There are numerous advantages to OpScans.

DREs can only be made safe by using open source code and digital signatures on every machine and firewalls on every conceivable connection! This is HARD WORK MAN! Who's going to do it? BOE's who don't know jack about computers?

It can be done, but you have to get the vendors to do it and there's almost no way to know for sure if it's being done. But at least it's a start.

You also need to do random audits and use the paper if any errors are found, and then do MORE random audits! Look for the Yale Study that showed how a few votes per precinct can swing elections. It's on the site above.

Please educate yourself on this!!!

Welcome to DU!

[Bill Bored]

16. And here's how to testify before a state legislature!

<http://www.wheresthepaper.org/ElectionLawDec20.htm>

[eridani]

17. Emphasize that optical scanning makes voting faster==

==and therefore cheaper.

I was a poll worker last year (I figured that since I’d been shooting off my mouth about black box voting for more than a year, I’d better start walking the talk) in a polling place with optical scanning. At lunch hour and after work, the privacy booths were filled all the time, but mostly people did not bother to wait their turn. We were at a school library, so they just used vacant reading tables and study carrels, or wandered off into the stacks in search of one of the many semi-private flat surfaces available there.

This dramatically sped up turnaround. Even with a well-designed machine, there will be plenty of slow, deliberative, or just plain bewildered voters that tie up machines for a long time. Whenever one of them is monopolizing a machine, you inevitably get a huge backlog line. If we intend to be successful at improving voter participation even further, there is no way that most counties will ever be able to afford enough machines which directly register votes to deal with the backlog created by the very situation of having computer interfaces that are themselves choke points for the whole process. Optical scanning is relatively simple technology by comparison, and it separates voting (which can take a long time) from tabulation (which is much faster).

In addition, it is a mistake to think that we can ever have something like an ATM machine that could be effectively be debugged to the point of being reliable enough to use for voting. ATM machines not only give you a paper receipt, but their hardware and software both have been slammed up against reality hard because they are constantly being tested—billions of times an hour, 24/7, 365 days a year. That is why, though there are almost certainly still a few bugs in the system, most of the bugs that could cause serious problems have been fixed, along with refinement of the user interface. By comparison, how often do we vote? Infrequently enough to insure that every election is a beta test. Think of how badly cars would suck if no one ever drove them except for two hours once a year.

[Land Shark]

18. Can you say "DRE bottleneck"? I knew you could!

Get some good comics to walk through the legislature saying (and this is deliberately bad comedy):

Q: What rhymes with OHIO?
A: DRE? Voting machine?

Q: Wrong! What rhymes with voting machine?
A: Bottleneck?

Q: Wrong again! What rhymes with bottleneck?
A; Long lines?

Q: Wrong!! Why did you say "long lines"?
A: Because these machines are expensive and you can't put one on top of your lap and use it!

[Bill Bored]

21. All very good points!

It takes about 30 seconds to vote on a lever machine! A little longer if you have to read propositions and so on for the first time. These are usually posted at the polling place though, or handed out, so you can read them while you're on line.

The other thing about ATMs is that the transaction isn't secret! Both parties know who they are, and this makes verifying things a heck of a lot easier. There are records outside the machine, the receipt, the bank statements, internal audits, etc. We have none of this with e-voting machines. The secret ballot makes the whole ATM analogy moot!

[marions ghost]

26. excellent points about opti-scan, eridani

Not only is touchscreen technology 3-4 times more expensive than optical scanning, it is far less efficient in handling large numbers of voters. This point is often overlooked, especially by those who have never experienced voting with paper ballot/optical scanning. You have explained it well.

If random independent hand counts occur at the same time as optical scanning, I think the system can be made even more trustworthy. And of course the central tabulators must be open to scrutiny.
--
I also appreciate your point about every election being a beta test with DREs. To date, the "beta tests" have failed miserably. No business in their right mind would proceed full steam ahead, given the results so far. DREs at this point are not defensible.

[yourout]

19. Crappy hardware makes a good excuse....

for crappy turnout. With paper and pen the only excuse for someone not being able to vote is lack of one or the other and that should NEVER happen. Crappy machines or machines designed/rigged to fail can disenfranchise large numbers of voters with a convienent excuse. Add in touchscreen calibration "problems", power outages, and a variety of other factors all related to DREs make me say.......
NO DREs!!!

[Land Shark]

24. Good point, e-voting DOUBLES & mystifies excuses for "anomalies" n/t

[truckin]

20. Thanks for all of your input, it's been very helpful

[icehenge]

22. DRE's and Open source code

I'll weight in with the reason that secret software that
these systems use isn't right.

I've been thinking of some ways you could explain the
reason open source code is important to that don't understand
what "source code" is.

Give the group your speaking to this pretend image in there mind.
A voting machine that is made by company X. This voting
machine tallys the voters votes. The machine though
can't be EVER be opened for inspection and the workings of
the machine are only known to company X. The machine
isn't inspected or scrutinies, or tested by anyone.
Who is to known if the company producing this voting
machine isn't doing something illegal.
Ask the crowd,
"Do we just take the company's word they are unpartisan?"

Whats inside the machine is a complete mystery to anyone
outside the company. This illusion you just painted to the
group is aDRE machine with protected/secret source code
(programming).

A lot of people think computers are confusing so it might
be best to use other analogies to represent DRE's.

Once people know that there votes are stored as 1's an 0's
and how easily manipulated there vote can be changed by
someone such as this company X they will understand the
dangers of DRE systems. Right now the electronic voting
systems are not safe when how they tally votes, etc is
kept secret.

Thanks for representing us!

[Dcitizen]

23. Here my answer

I trust CT many points, especially Susan is DEM, but

Voters dont need to hold on the receipts, because of selling ballots,
and dispute of counterfeit ballots.

Paper trials is the audition's technical requirement for information system to verify the result of the central computer with the totals of votes from DRE, or any machines without hand counting of votes. Nationwide voters casted their ballots at the machines, but werent sure their votes are counted accurate, because the result of voting are reported from the main computers.

Malware problem can fool us with very good looking paper trails and the electronic result. None machines are better than others about this unless they can prove to meet the requirement of technology for automatic quality inspection of software, programming language, software design, and 3-in-1 audit principle. CT can email me for this. Good trade?

:-)

[msongs]

25. lots of great stuff at chuckherrin.com about voter hacking etc.....

suggest you go there and click around the site to the various vote fraud and hacking pages and FAQ's. many at DU will be familiar with this guy, and if you want to learn more, go there.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/dean4dnc.htm