Avi Rubin is a professor of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University who is famous for bringing to light vulnerabilities in Diebold Election Systems’s Accuvote electronic voting machines.
(read about his book about the experience: Brave new ballot; The battle to safeguard democracy in the age of electronic voting)
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Posted in HR811, legislation, news, votingmachines
In a true display of democracy, a town hall meeting held at the New Bedford High School auditorium Monday gave the crowd of approximately 550 residents the opportunity to publicly voice every last one of the inane thoughts and concerns they would normally only have the chance to utter to themselves.
Though the meeting was ostensibly held to discuss a proposed $21,000 project to replace the high school’s grass football field with synthetic turf, City Councilman Thomas Reed inadvertently opened the floodgates to a deluge of ill-informed, off-topic diatribes on inconsequential bull**** when he allowed those in attendance to demonstrate their God-given gift of language.
Posted in humor
From the Ballot Access News:
HR 811, the bill in Congress to require vote-counting machines to produce a paper trail, will not be taken up in the House until September 17 at the earliest. Congressman Rush Holt (D-N.J.) had hoped it would pass the House this week, but it has fierce opposition, both from elections officials who don’t want a paper trail, and from activists who want to eventually eliminate all electronic vote-counting machines. Thus the bill has enemies from both directions.
Posted in HR811, legislation, news, votingmachines
I am nuetral / undecided about HR811. If you have decided one way or another, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has an advocacy page for supporting HR811. You should be able to edit the message to indicate whatever view you have; support/rejection/something more nuanced.
From the the EFF HR811 advocacy page:
Along with requiring machines to produce a voter-verified paper ballot, H.R. 811 mandates random audits and many other critical reforms. For over three years, EFF has been helping Rep. Rush Holt move this legislation forward, and support from individuals like you has been crucial in garnering an astounding 215 cosponsors. Hundreds of activists joined EFF for Washington, D.C. lobby days in 2005 and 2006, and thousands of letters have poured in to Congress.
Now those efforts are paying off, and victory in the House is within reach — take action now and fight for fair, transparent elections.
Quoting the New York Times (care of the Brad blog):
It is unfortunate that the bill does not contain a provision banning the use of touch-screen voting machines. A touch-screen ban would encourage states to use optical scan machines, which rely on paper ballots read by a computer, like a standardized test form. Optical scans are less expensive and less vulnerable to vote theft.
There is still time before the bill becomes law to add a ban on touch-screen voting. If the House fails to do so, the Senate should, and it should fight for it to be in the final bill.
There has been a spirited debate about how quickly to require reforms to be implemented. There have been calls for putting a solution off until 2012. That is too long to wait.
Posted in HR811, legislation, news, votingmachines
A good summary from Ed Felten’s Freedom to Tinker blog:
H.R. 811, the e-voting bill originally introduced by Rep. Rush Holt, is reportedly up for a vote of the full House of Representatives tomorrow.
…
H.R. 811 gets the big issues right, requiring a voter-verified paper ballot with post-election audits to verify that the electronic records are consistent with the paper ballots.The bill is cautious where caution is warranted. For example, it gives states and counties the flexibility to choose optical-scan or touch-screen systems (or others), as long as there is a suitable voter-verified paper record. Though some e-voting activists want to ban touch-screens altogether, I think that would be a mistake. Touch screens, if done correctly — which no vendor has managed yet, I’ll admit — do offer some advantages.
Posted in EFF, electronic_frontier_foundation, HR811, legislation, news, votingmachines
The folks at WhyTuesday have caught my attention. Today I decided to sign their pledge.
I encourage you to do the same. Continue reading
Posted in calltoaction, turnout
A bit more on electronic voting machines (EVTs):
The site Counted as Cast is a good resource for information about what systems are out there, where they are used, and what sort of issues there are with EVTs. What is interesting to me is that the primary arguments for EVTs (accessibility and cost saving) are fairly weak.
For your information and entertainment, here is a graphic from the Washington post entitled “How to steal an election”:
It’s easier to rig an electronic voting machine than a Las Vegas slot machine, says University of Pennsylvania visiting professor Steve Freeman. That’s because Vegas slots are better monitored and regulated than America’s voting machines, Freeman writes in a book out in July that argues, among other things, that President Bush may owe his 2004 win to an unfair vote count. We’ll wait to read his book before making a judgment about that. But Freeman has assembled comparisons that suggest Americans protect their vices more than they guard their rights, according to data he presented at an October meeting of the American Statistical Association in Philadelphia.
(click on image to see full graphic)
Posted in fraud, votingmachines
Burried in my summary of the broadcast of Dan Rather presents “The Trouble with Touch Screens” is a description of allegations of incompetence and/or fraud by Sequoia voting systems in their production of punchcard ballots for the 2000 election.
These are the punchcards that were used in Florida and taught Americans terms like hanging chad.
There are serious allegations. It is important that these allegations are investigated:
Here is a summary of what was revealed in Dan’s report:
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Posted in dan_rather, fraud, news, votingmachines
All About Voting 