California’s Bowen, the press and the election integrity S.O.S. By Joan Brunwasser, OpEdNews July 7, 2007
Normal people use weekends to relax and socialize, recharging their much-overworked batteries. My enforced leisure started last Thursday with an unanticipated case of the flu. This was aggravated by intermittent, often simultaneous, lapses in telephone and internet service. As a result, I’ve been in a combination news vacuum/time warp – precisely at the moment when so much has been going on. I feel like a debilitated Sisyphus, pushing that boulder up the incline on wobbly legs, one arm tied behind my back, stopping frequently for bathroom breaks.
With the almost simultaneous release of three important studies on computerized election systems in the last 10 days or so (CA Secretary of State Bowen’s “top-to-bottom” review, and the UConn and Florida State University reports), is this roiling election morass finally going to reach the tipping point and stimulate massive media interest? For all I know, it’s now front page on every newspaper across the country and being heralded on talk shows and news programs. But based on past history, I tend to doubt it. After too many years of being ridiculed and marginalized, election critics are certainly now finding a more receptive collective ear. But, with the 2008 elections not that far off and presidential primaries just months away, we’re cutting this one pretty close.
It’s an embarrassment of riches, after a virtual drought. Let’s recap what we’ve got. Over the last several weeks, PBS aired a NOW special on voter caging – the despicable practice of targeting minority voters, including those serving in Iraq – for illegal disenfranchisement. http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/330/index.html The New York Times had a page one story on the revolving door between election officials and voting machine vendors. The Times also had an unsigned editorial pushing the passage of HR 811 (the Holt “election reform” bill), and a satire on vote selling, which, sadly, missed the whole point.
In addition, National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation’s Science Friday had a segment on the CA review of the election systems in place there. This was actually quite good, although too brief, sharing the program with several other topics including the recent Minneapolis bridge collapse. The host interviewed Professor Matt Bishop of UC Davis, who coordinated the Red Team attacks that infiltrated the various election machinery now in use in California. http://www.hackingdemocracy.com/ He points out that the review is noteworthy because from now on, no one can claim to make a decision about the voting machines out of ignorance. While he was confident that there were solutions for some of the vulnerabilities – which were alarmingly easy to discover – he was equally confident that for many, there were no obvious solutions. Everyone involved in the review agreed that they would not want to switch places with SoS Bowen in her sure-to-be-unpopular-no-matter-what decision.
Along with the out-of-practice enthusiasm of voting integrity advocates and average citizens in California and across the nation, Bowen’s action is sure to garner a huge push-back by vendors and their dependent election officials. We got a taste of that at the hearing in Sacramento this last week where SoS Bowen was attacked by one registrar of voters after another for her attempts to bring about honest, accurate, and secure elections. What’s wrong with this picture?
Since I’ve been laid up and out of touch, I’ve missed any of the organized counterattacks to come from the vendors, who see their multi-billion dollar boondoggle at risk. I’m quite sure that the campaign will gain speed and ferocity in the days to come. It will be interesting to see what the press does with it. Will they turn over a new leaf and finally see this as a story of huge national import? Or will they continue as they have been going, which caused Project Censored to make “another year of distorted election coverage” #3 in the top 25 uncovered stories of 2006? http://www.projectcensored.org/censored_2006/index.htm
The California tests were pretty devastating in their evaluation of election technology currently used in our most populous state. They confirm prior tests showing problems with security, source codes, and accessibility, among other things. In John Gideon’s post at BradBlog last Tuesday, http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4890, he quotes the executive study on accessibility and goes on to say,
Notice that the researchers say, “none [of the machines] met the accessibility requirements of current law.” That’s federal and state law. The machines have been sold for years – and, in fact,the use of DRE [touch-screen voting] machines as a whole has been jammed down America’s polling place – on the basis that they meet federal HAVA mandates for an accessible means of voting in every polling place. And yet, the California analysts found, they are not accessible at all…
Bowen’s decision leaves one DRE per polling place for the disabled. We have been shown repeatedly how a person with access to even a single machine can corrupt an entire election. So this aspect of her decision is hard to understand, particularly given the bogus nature of the accessibility issue.
And let’s not let the hubbub over Bowen’s heroic actions overpower the other studies so recently released. The University of Connecticut hacked into a Diebold TSx DRE. John Washburn http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4902 in “Why VVPAT ‘Paper Trails’ Are Not Enough” describes how,
It is possible to alter the ballot definitions of the DRE. The alteration would create the behavior where the votes for two candidates are exchanged. Thus, the voter touches the screen next to the name of John Smith, the screen lights up the selection for John Smith, the voter verifiable paper audit trail prints the name John Smith, but, nonetheless, the invisible electronic ballot accrues the vote to Pocahontas.
So much for paper trails.
The UConn results cannot be assailed by any of the usual vendor arguments. Washburn writes that this study, Provides an excellent counter to the oft-repeated vendor talking point that the California testing is similar to “giving keys to a thief”...The University of Connecticut team had no access to source code or any information which was not publicly available.
Also noteworthy was the report commissioned in Florida – a state renowned for election controversy. Florida State University Security and Assurance in Information Technology Laboratory (SAIT) essentially mirrored the findings of Black Box Voting/Harri Hursti during the infamous Leon County, Florida 2003 hack that was filmed in the HBO documentary special “Hacking Democracy, ” http://www.hackingdemocracy.com/, which showed that votes could be changed invisibly on the Diebold optical scanners. Worse yet, despite the fact that these vulnerabilities have been known by the manufacturer for a number of years, the problems have not been addressed nor satisfactorily corrected. So much for optical scanners being the answer to our prayers.
Let’s go back to The New York Times. Long ago, I gave up expecting real election news to be covered by my own Chicago rag, the Sun Times. It is now officially our go-to place for sports and Sudoko, nothing more. But, forgive me if I expected more from The New York Times.
Take the “Buy My Ballot, Please” piece on the editorial page of Saturday’s paper. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/04/opinion/04olin.html?_r=1&oref=slogin While I fully realize that this is an attempt at humor, is it too much to expect its basic premise to be correct? Olin kicks off the article by saying, It is easy to understand the emerging consensus favoring a national standard for paper receipts from voting machines. You don’t have to see a grassy knoll at every polling place to harbor suspicions about ballot technology and to demand receipts verifying that the machine properly recorded your vote.
Has someone not been paying attention? The problem is WAY bigger than having a supposed receipt. The point is that the receipt guarantees nothing since we just saw in the UConn study cited earlier that apparent results are not the “real” results. I tend to lose my patience when people who should know better don’t. This guy is director of the Institute for Judicial Studies, not a seventh-grader fudging a social studies assignment.
A recent unsigned NYT editorial called for rushing through HR 811, Rep. Holt’s “election reform” bill. While the piece did cite numerous good points included in the bill, it missed some huge, potentially disastrous, ones that have turned off many well-informed citizens. I’m referring to the fact that in the newer version of the morphed and bulked up Holt bill (from five or six pages to over 60), select individuals are allowed to view the innards of the voting machines only after signing non-disclosure agreements that would subject them to severe penalties for any infractions. Seeing how difficult it’s been without such a clause, why would we want to make examining voting data more complicated and inaccessible?
A quick look at Alaska 2004 shows how it took voters a lawsuit and over two years to get access to voting records that were described as belonging to Diebold. State officials claimed that the release of the data would be “a threat to national security.” No kidding. See Brad Friedman’s “Alaska Is At It Again: Refuses to Release 2006 Election Database Despite Court Order.” http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3855#more-3855 When the voters finally got a hold of the electronic data, it was only to discover that it had been frequently accessed and altered – so much for computerized machinery inspiring voter confidence through its accuracy and integrity. And this was before the deluge of recent reports pointing out more flaws in this election system we call our “billion dollar baby.” You don’t have to be partisan to have this strain your credulity. I would call you prudent.
Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which exists for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. We aim to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Electronic (computerized) voting systems are simply antithetical to democratic principles.
CER set up a lending library to achieve the widespread distribution of the DVD Invisible Ballots: A temptation for electronic vote fraud. Within eighteen months, the project had distributed over 3200 copies across the country and beyond. CER now concentrates on group showings, OpEd pieces, articles, reviews, interviews, discussion sessions, networking, conferences, anything that promotes awareness of this critical problem. Joan has been Election Integrity Editor for OpEdNews since December, 2005.
If voting could change things they'd make it illegal.
It's been seven years since the 2000 election and the opposition to creating a fair, variable, uniform voting system has been fierce and one has to wonder why anyone that says they believe in democracy would be so against doing such.
Of course the answer is that the last thing the powers that be want is to actually have the people's voice counted. Whether we can fix this problem in time for the 08' elections is doubtful and if indeed we don't you can count on having another Republican in office and if and when that happens we'll have fascism before we'll ever see a true democracy where every vote is counted.
I wish I could say I had some hope but it's going to take a massive media effort coming from a media that is owned by the same forces that will do everything in their power to make sure we don't have election reform. Add in the fact that the thieves of democracy have perfected the act of stealing and I get even more discouraged.
We'll need a voter drive even bigger than the ones we had in 04' and 06', and I mean a serious effort to get more people to the polls then every before to overcome the forces that will be against us. Because if we don't the very real possibility of this country becoming a living Hell is very real.
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Mr M (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 9 diaries, 1253 comments)
on Wednesday, August 8, 2007 at 10:08:40 AM
This is what war is- take the goood battles & keep fighting
Joan
You really pulled it all together- I feel like you were in my head the last week and took my thoughts and put them down in an article (and I haven't talked to you at all). The best is there was, given how much that came out this fast and furious last 10 days, someone needed to recap. I have spent hours tracking down that Conn. study and couldn't find it. I knew I saw it but there were hundreds of emails everyday and so much stuff I started thinking I hadn't seen it-- and there it is in your excellent piece.
It is very hard to have hope when you're fighting fascism- particularly when most who participate in it don't recognize they are- I mean the media, the government, etc. And as you say we have spent years being ridiculed and marginalized. But to the person whose comment precedes mine- if you insist on having hope that tomorrow will be better in order to fight; if you give in to the forces which have every intention of causing you to cave in and think this isn't already fascism; if you focus on how much they've gained and how large the mountains we have to climb– well you understand where I'm going. Joan gets it.
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident." - Arthur Schopenhauer
We're making progress. We moved to the violently opposed stage and with some positive push, using the riches we've just been delivered, we might start scratching the surface of the self-evident!
Thanks for this piece
andi
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andi novick (52 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 14 comments)
on Wednesday, August 8, 2007 at 11:04:54 AM
your words mean so much to me. even though i have spent more time in bed than out in the last six days, this was a piece that was fighting to get out, almost like an alien being. i wasn't sure that i could put it together; there is so much going on and my mind wouldn't function at its usual level. my daughter's support and excellent editing skills helped make this a reality.
thanks, andi!
if i'm going to be on someone's wavelength, i could do a lot worse being on yours...
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Joan Brunwasser (133 articles, 3335 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 589 comments)
on Wednesday, August 8, 2007 at 11:49:56 AM
Thanks Joan, sorry to learn of your recent illness and hope you make a speedy recovery. This article shows you're back in fine form though, and so with your permission I'll use it in a letter to my local weekly, the Lassen County Times- with a new twist: I was the first to use links to other articles in letters to the Editor, but this time I'm going to try using tinyurl so your long URL is reduced to this: http://tinyurl.com/2c3ecr, and if it works, this could become another tool to spread the word that the jig is up for the computerized voting industry. That bell can't be un-rung, they can't put that toothpaste back in the tube. The link to the Zogby poll was a nice touch, and now that it's almost been a year to the day it was released, August 23, 2006, a lot has happened to turn it into a sea change.
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Chuck Garner (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 118 comments)
on Wednesday, August 8, 2007 at 12:21:12 PM
Joan, Once again, you have written an article that is human and inspiring and informative. We are so lucky to have YOU on our side. Please feel better soon! Thank you and onward, no matter what. SM
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Joan Brunwasser (133 articles, 3335 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 589 comments)
on Wednesday, August 8, 2007 at 12:29:58 PM
Computers are amazing beasts. They can do almost anything but …
Within the bowels of the computer, we can change day into night, call an elephant a donkey or visa versa. We can even replace program code on the fly when our mission is done. Yep. The code running Election Day may not be the same that’s left for a proper investigation. Still, it’s not the hackers we need to be focusing on. Breaches from an inside source are much more sinister and much less apt to be found. Do I believe in conspiracies? No…well I didn’t until I started collecting “facts” for my novel’s Deputy Elections Supervisor Cady Palmer. Now I believe without a doubt a silent coup could rage across the country in our high-tech state-of-the-art independent vote-counting machines. The trick would be to keep the wins within the margin of error. Just skim off the top. One for you, two for me. Would we ever find out?
Back to business, business basics that is. We need to stop pushing a fix until we thoroughly define the causes of our problems, until we determine the entire solution. We need to operate more like a profitable business. That means start from beginning to end: procedures, election laws, controls quality assurance, rigorous pre-election testing for more than a token number of machines, audits…The list is long…and complex.But after six years, isn’t it time we do it right?
Lani Massey Brown, A MARGIN OF ERROR: BALLOTS OF STRAW, a novel
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Lani Massey Brown (9 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 5 comments)
on Wednesday, August 8, 2007 at 3:57:07 PM
The Courage Campaign has published a petition I developed in support of Bowen's top-to-bottom review and we've collected almost 2,000 signatures so far! If you can help spread the word by emailing the link to your list, posting the link to the OpEd News, that would be greatly appreciated. We are looking for organizations to endorse this effort and send the link out to their lists. Bowen needs our support now that her detractors are so active, thank you for being one of those who is proving her the back up she needs for this difficult job.
Joan, Fantastic article! I stay up on the topic as much as my crazy schedule allows. Bowen's decertification action is so very pivotal to reclaiming our democracy. I've sent her a message of thanx. Now get over that awful flu!
SS, CA
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Joan Brunwasser (133 articles, 3335 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 589 comments)
on Thursday, August 9, 2007 at 7:55:25 PM
