OpEdNews » Holt's HR 811, A Deceptive Boondoggle -- 10 Blunders to Fix

Support OEN
With Your
Tax-Deductible Donation

Tags for This Article:

Populum Tag Cloud Control Panel
	Fine tune your search to access content

Articles	Links
Diaries	Products
Events	All

All time
Last 6 mos
Last month
Last week
Last 24 hrs

From:
Month Day Year

To:
Month Day Year

Alphabet Popularity	Count ON Count OFF
This Level	Sub-levels

Tag(s): Election-Voting Issues; Electronic Voting; Voting Integrity; Voting Laws Federal HAVA; Voting Laws State; Voting Machines; Voting Reform; Voting Technology
Add to My Group

February 21, 2007 at 17:15:30

Holt's HR 811, A Deceptive Boondoggle -- 10 Blunders to Fix

by Bruce O'Dell Page 3 of 4 page(s)

www.opednews.com

SAVE FAVORITES

VIEW FAVORITES

View Ratings | Rate It

As socially-responsible professionals we must openly acknowledge the inherent limitations of our ability to ensure voting is as trustworthy as a critical national security system should be. We cannot and should not ask the public to simply trust the outcome of any testing and certification process, no matter how many "experts" say so.

Blunder #4: We need machines to mark our ballots for us
Strange as it may seem, some of my colleagues even doubt a voter's ability to even mark a piece of paper without machine assistance. For example, the authors of a study published by ACCURATE (you know, the folks with the $7.5 million grant) entitled "Measuring the Usability of Paper Ballots" were surprised to discover that "over 11% of the [paper] ballots contained at least one error". But they measured "errors" by asking their test voters to vote three times in succession using three different ballots with different layouts; hardly a realistic case. Their conclusion that such a test "is a clear cause for concern, with possible public policy implications such as procedures for handling of narrow margins of victory and recounts" seems overblown.

Let me go out on a limb and state I believe that we voters in America, like voters throughout the world, can bravely take command of our own destinies and mark our own ballots. And count them, too.

Blunder #3: We should hand-count as few ballots as possible
And yet some of my colleagues have argued that paper ballot records are a bad thing. Shamos again:

"Ballot systems are sometimes naively regarded as the safest, a vestige of our faith in the superiority of paper records over the electronic. The dream is that in order to verify the election one need do no more than gather up the ballots and tabulate them a second time. However, ballot systems are not only unsafe but completely unauditable."

Well... that's a rather cheeky statement, and it must come as something of a revelation to professional auditors. Here's a quick reality check: if you agree that it is impossible to effectively audit and safeguard paper, stop by your local bank and help yourself to the cash on the way out. Or if you're in Washington, please drop in at the White House and pick up your own copy of the President's Daily Brief; I've heard it's fascinating reading.

Paper based processes are not perfectly secure, of course. But there are people who certainly think we've figured out how to audit and safeguard paper-based systems to an acceptable degree of public and commercial confidence over the last few centuries.

The bizarre assertion that it is impossible to audit paper election records also must be a surprise to the citizens of Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Germany, Ireland, Iraq, Palestine... and so on, all of whom not only conduct their elections (exclusively) on paper, but also manage to audit the outcome with an acceptable level of public satisfaction with the results. If you do not believe me, Google the phrase "Disputed Canadian Election".

In fact one reason why the outcome of paper-based balloting is so uncontroversial in those countries is that "ballot box stuffing" (that great bugaboo of so many of my colleagues who coincidentally make a living off of the electronic voting industry) in practice seems rather difficult to pull off without being detected.

Blunder #2: Computers count ballots better than people
This is a supreme article of faith among my technical peers. Yet surprisingly enough, there is little evidence in its favor.

In fact, there is a fascinating study from 2001 (interestingly enough, published shortly before HAVA was enacted) which concluded that not only were hand-counted paper ballots the most accurate of all vote counting methods, measuring by residual vote rate, but that every single technological "innovation" of the last century - lever machines, punch cards, optical scan, DRE - actually measurably decreased the accuracy of the voting process. Their conclusion:

These results are a stark warning of how difficult it is to implement new voting technologies. People worked hard to develop these new technologies. Election officials carefully evaluated the systems, with increasing attentiveness over the last decade. The result: our best efforts applying computer technology have decreased the accuracy of elections, to the point where the true outcomes of many races are unknowable.

It will come as no surprise that some of my colleagues still question whether multiple citizens (each with competing political allegiances, and drawing upon the processing power of the one thousand trillion synapses in the massively-parallel neurocomputer we call a human brain) are collectively better able to interpret voter intent as marked on paper, as opposed to a "dumb" optical scanner. Of course, the people also have to count way up to 500 or so several times. Clearly, a job that calls for a machine.

Blunder #1: We don't need to justify using computers
Voting is not the first time IT professionals have created a solution in search of a problem, and it won't be the last. And while the IT profession is a leading contributor to our current predicament, it is by no means the only one. The entire end-to-end voting process has broken down and it's in many people's interests to see it remains that way, including our elected officials. No career politician is likely to voluntarily do anything that might undermine the legitimacy of their position.

Since the heady days of the 1960s, a new, multi-billion-dollar a year electronic voting industry with world-wide growth aspirations has emerged. Whether the original drive to automate our voting was driven by genuine desire to improve elections, naive faith in progress, blissful ignorance of the potential threats, bad technical advice or coldly calculated self-interest, that industry is now so entrenched it has now become almost impossible to question the original decision to apply computer technology to voting. Surprisingly strong passions are aroused in defense of the machines.

In fact, we've had more than enough hands-on independent analysis of voting equipment to confirm what should have been utterly obvious all along: the machines were, are and will remain totally untrustworthy.

I think the truth is more cleverly hidden. Voting systems are riddled with so many brazen vulnerabilities that can be exploited through hands-on access that surely some must be deliberate features of the products and no accident. Black Box Voting has documented just how much certain election officials appear to appreciate the "back doors" built into their voting equipment. To the extent that such "features" have actually been exploited by unscrupulous local election officials, they have been co-opted, and certainly will not voluntarily relinquish computerized voting.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Bruce O'Dell is a self-employed information technology consultant with more than twenty five years experience who applies his broad technical expertise to his work as an election integrity activist. His current consulting practice centers on e-Commerce security and the performance and design of very large-scale computer systems for Fortune 100 clients. He recently spent a year as the chief technical architect in a company-wide security project at one of the top twenty public companies in America, led a multiple client projects for compliance with new credit card data security standards, and has designed secure "virtual cash" e-commerce protocols. In 2007 he was invited to testify on computer voting security issues to the Texas and New Hampshire legislatures. He lives just outside Minneapolis, Minnesota, and shares a love of good books with his wife - and her beautiful garden, with their talkative cat.

	Contact Author
	Contact Editor
	View Other Articles by Author

Bookmark this page: (what's this?)

(More...)

5 comments

My name it means nothing, my age it means less. My deeds of activism are mine to enjoy and share as I feel necesary, not as some clown in a small forum's administration thinks I must..This place gets worse each and every visit.
Member banned on June 3, 2008 for repeated abuse of editors.
ardee D.My name it means nothing, my age it means less. My deeds of activism are mine to enjoy and share as I feel necesary, not as some clown in a small forum's administration thinks I must..This place gets worse each and every visit.
Member banned on June 3, 2008 for repeated abuse of editors.

Paper Ballots

I repeat, paper ballots, hand counted, easily recounted. Canada does it, many nations do it, why can we not do it?

There is always this one question that comes to mind whenever this subject is raised. The Democrats have possibly been the victims in two Presidential elections and at least one mid term election since these egregious machines have come to the fore, and since this even more egregious administration has used the constitution as so much toilet paper. Exit poll irregularities certainly at least suggest the possibility of machination with cast ballots.

One might think that these democrats would be at least interested in entering this debate about honest elections, or in calling for a return to an auditable form of election mechanics. Yet one hears nary a word from them, with the work being done by folks like BBV and other real patriots in the private sector. Why, I wonder, is this the case?

by ardee D. (6 articles, 4 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 2377 comments) on Wednesday, February 21, 2007 at 6:13:05 PM

Founder and President of US Count Votes, dba The National Election Data Archive and volunteer for honest, accurately counted elections since 2003. Masters degree in mathematics with emphasis on computer science. Has written numerous academic and scientific papers with computer scientists, statisticians, and mathematicians on election integrity topics, inluding how to calculate minimum manual audit amounts necessary to ensure election outcome integrity.
Kathy DoppFounder and President of US Count Votes, dba The National Election Data Archive and volunteer for honest, accurately counted elections since 2003. Masters degree in mathematics with emphasis on computer science. Has written numerous academic and scientific papers with computer scientists, statisticians, and mathematicians on election integrity topics, inluding how to calculate minimum manual audit amounts necessary to ensure election outcome integrity.

Good Post - one small error

Bruce, you said that "HR 811 appears to ban electronic remote transmission and mandate hand-delivery of results, presumably on some kind of electronic media."

Actually HR811 does not ban electronic transmission of election results via Internet connections on the central tabulators and it only bans Internet or wireless transmission on the voting machines.

Even if all Internet and wireless connections to both central tabulators and voting machines were banned (as they should be), this would not constitute a ban on electronic transmission of election results, which could be moved via physical removable media to other computers connected to the Internet.

---

I appreciate your bringing up the topics of how limited the usefulness of voting machine testing or software disclosure truly is. The fact that the US EAC is putting so much stock in testing voting machines, only shows the EAC's lack of technical competence in thinking testing would prevent problems or fraud; and software disclosure and verification, I totally agree with you, is not a realistic solution especially given today's shoddy voting machines; and the lack of resources available.

Thanks for explaining these concepts in your area of expertise.

by Kathy Dopp (33 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 49 comments) on Thursday, February 22, 2007 at 4:58:37 PM

NA
MWhittleNA

Let's keep the "integrity" in election integrity

It's inappropriate to quote someone out of context. The full quote from Dr. Shamos is:

"In short, I am unable to discern any engineering difference that allows us to entrust our lives to aircraft but would impel us to avoid voting machines. Not to endorse questionable voting systems or trivialize the possibility of chicanery, but I believe I and the republic will survive if a president is elected who was not entitled to the office, but I will not survive if a software error causes my plane to go down."

He meant literally survive and no one in the election integrity community benefits from your disingenuous interpretation. I add that some might argue that this has already occurred.

by MWhittle (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments) on Thursday, February 22, 2007 at 10:01:00 PM

DOB -- September 20, 1940. Became active in civil rights and peace movements in 1962. Active in socialist and antiwar movements -- 1963-69. Active in Gay Liberation from 1969 to present.
rhalfhillDOB -- September 20, 1940. Became active in civil rights and peace movements in 1962. Active in socialist and antiwar movements -- 1963-69. Active in Gay Liberation from 1969 to present.

A DISTINCTION WITHOUT A DIFFERENCE

I don't see how your quoting Dr Shamus more fully than Bruce O'Dell did makes any difference. Ipso facto, the Republic cannot survive if someone is elected to the President who is not entitled to it by being actually elected, since being a Republic means that the voters intent is what determines the selection of the President and other elected officials. Since the overwhelming evidence indicates that someone who was not entitled to the office was elected in both 2000 and 2004, the Republic HAS not survived and is now only a historical memory, Speaking bluntly, the elections were stolen. Thus the Republic cannot be saved but only restored -- by whatever means are necessary.
Robert Halfhill rhalfhill@juno.com

by rhalfhill (3 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 310 comments) on Friday, February 23, 2007 at 4:28:02 AM

Andi Novick
Northeast Citizens for Responsible Media
www.re-media.org
andi novickAndi Novick
Northeast Citizens for Responsible Media
www.re-media.org

Talking about Integrity

The comment entitled "Let's keep the "integrity" in election integrity" confirms precisely what Bruce described in his intelligent and thoughtful latest submission: the commenter's response-- the passionate attack on what is clearly a considered and honest analysis. And what drives the attack? What is being defended? What would be lost if tomorrow all the DREs were dumped in Boston Harbor?

There was nothing inappropriate about quoting the single line and not the full paragraph because the distinction between literally surviving with one's life and the survival of the republic is meaningless in the context it was intended.

In fact, it's the analogy Mr. Shamos employs in the fuller quote that is inappropriate and misleading. We're not just talking software error- we're talking about the ability to manipulate the software and that will take us down; whether we've lost the right to have our votes counted or we're flying in a plane. It is Mr. Shamos' analogy that is disingenuous. It is an insult both to those who have indeed not survived engineered plane crashes due to manipulation of the software (some of which may even be related to our elections) as well as to the hundreds of thousands of people who would be alive today but for the software manipulation which assisted in the theft of the American presidency.

Andi Novick

by andi novick (54 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 15 comments) on Friday, February 23, 2007 at 2:22:46 PM