SPAM: -------------------- Start SpamAssassin results ---------------------- SPAM: This mail is probably spam. The original message has been altered SPAM: so you can recognise or block similar unwanted mail in future. SPAM: See http://spamassassin.org/tag/ for more details. SPAM: SPAM: Content analysis details: (6.3 hits, 5 required) SPAM: Hit! (2.7 points) Subject contains lots of white space SPAM: Hit! (1.6 points) BODY: Contains "Casino" SPAM: Hit! (1.0 point) Received via an IP in dynablock.njabl.org SPAM: [RBL check: found 200.244.200.151.dynablock.njabl.org.] SPAM: Hit! (1.0 point) DNSBL: Received via an IP in dynablock.njabl.org SPAM: SPAM: -------------------- End of SpamAssassin results --------------------- -------- Original Message -------- Subject: RE: [Politech] Who's afraid of digital voting? Jim Lucier points to John Fund article... Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 10:57:28 -0700 From: Popkin, Laird (WMG Corp) <Laird.Popkin@private> To: 'Declan McCullagh' <declan@private>, politech@private I participating in writing the LCCR recommendations, so I'm fairly familiar with this area. There are a couple of points that I'd like to make regarding this article: It is important to differentiate between "electronic voting", which has immense promise to make voting more accessible to many people, as well as improving the efficiency and accuracy of the voting process, and "Direct-Recording Electronic" voting systems, a type of electronic voting system that record votes _only_ electronically, with no human verified physical record, which raise many concerns, and have had numerous operational problems in actual use, leading to (for example) decertification of DRE's in California. It's critical to be aware that there are many electronic voting systems that provide all of the benefits that the LCCR cares about (prevention of overvotes, reduction of undervotes, spoken prompts for hearing or reading impaired voters, support for multi-lingual ballots, voters like touchscreen voting), but that are not DRE's. For example, the Open Voting Consortium (http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/) has an open source voting system based on the principle that we should use public software to run public elections. The system uses touchcreen stations to print ballots, which are then reviewed by the voters for accuracy and handed to a poll worker for tallying. Of course, there are also several commercial electronic voting systems that aren't DRE's, and many of the DRE vendors are tacking on printers (with debatable value) in order to address the trust issues. Once this distinction is clear, we can discuss the issues separately. My personal opinion is: 1) Electronic Voting is good. When accompanied by appropriate procedures, it allows for rapid, transparent, efficient elections. I am particularly enthusiastic about the use of open software for elections, since transparency in the election process is critical, but every aspect of the voting process (i.e. not just the software) be open to public inspection, including not only the polling stations, but also the central tabulation systems (a far more efficient place to commit fraud than the individual voting stations). For example, if every polling station publishes its records immediately after the close of voting, independent observers could perform their own tabulation in order to verify the official results. 2) Direct-Recording Electronic systems are bad (and Voter Verified Paper Ballots are good), because the lack of a voter-verified physical record of each vote cast means that it is impossible to prove that the system is trustworthy. Yes, there are many software testing methodologies, but they are intended to detect errors in design or implementation, not intentional efforts to evade detection. Nevada's Gaming Control Board, which regulates slot machines for casino's, has the experience of detecting attempted fraud in electronic devices, and http://sos.state.nv.us/press/voting%20machine%20security.pdf was the result, after which Nevada announced that they're requiring a voter verified paper trail for the 2004 elections. Please keep in mind that the "Recommendations of the Brennan Center for Justice and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights for Improving Reliability of Direct Recording Electronic Voting System" (http://www.votingtechnology.org/) is _not_ an endorsement of DRE's. The recommendations are narrow in scope -- steps to be taken by jurisdictions that "own certified DRE voting systems that will be used in the 2004 fall elections" that "will help to alleviate certain risks of security breaches and machine malfunctions and to improve public confidence in the election administration in the target jurisdictions". It's important to keep in mind that "these recommendations should not be seen as an endorsement or indictment of such systems or their use", which raises issues that aren't feasible to address for the 2004 elections. Finally, I'll point out that elections are significantly different from other sorts of electronic transactions. For example, all voting must be anonymous, and open to all voters even if they do not have formal identification, so none of the participants are authenticated. Voters cannot retain a physical record of their votes, because that would enable vote buying. The presentation and content of the ballots are regulated uniquely in every state. Making a system that is trustworthy under such constraints is harder than it looks. - Laird Popkin lairdp@private 917/453-0700 -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Who's afraid of us seeing voting-machine source-code? Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 11:30:09 -0400 From: James M. Ray <jray@free-market.net> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> CC: politech@private References: <4105E259.4030806@private> At 1:04 AM -0400 7/27/04, Declan McCullagh wrote: >For a long time I have wondered how anyone who believes that properly >constructed, authenticated, and encrypted paperless transactions can be >safer and more secure than paper based transactions by any reasonable >standard can buy into the theory that digital balloting can never work >unless it achieves some impossible degree of perfection. ... Hi Declan. I'm not demanding an impossible standard like perfection, but I DO need reasons why the source code for voting machines apparently must be proprietary, and THAT's an issue Mr. Fund (conspicuously) missed, even though it is central to critiques of Diebold & has-been since the issue first popped-up... One wonders why? It's not like this kind of programming is rocket-science, and one would THINK that an ability to "look under the hood" might silence the critics Mr. Fund complains-about. (Please feel free to send this to your list, I get so much spam that you needn't bother to hide my email address, and if you have his email address you can also forward it to Mr. Fund.) Thanks, and I hope all's well. JMR -- Regards, James M. Ray <jray@free-market.net> "In 1972, when Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs, the annual federal budget for the war was around $101 million. Next year, it will be $17.8 billion." -- Joseph D. McNamara, former police chief of both Kansas City, MO, and San Jose, CA. (He said that a few years ago, it's much more money now -- north of $40 billion by all estimates) -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Politech] Who's afraid of digital voting? Jim Lucier points to Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 15:53:41 -0400 (EDT) From: Dean Anderson <dean@private> To: declan@private Hopefully, the message below explains why "secure paperless transactions" don't mean that you have a fair and trustworthy election. There are other conditions that have to be met, such as "one person, one vote". Another condition is that the machine itself has to be secure from tampering. Anyone who has ever had a SSL protected server compromised knows that a secure protocol is worthless if the server is compromised. A cracker does not need to break SSL to read all the messages. Similarly, a "secure paperless transaction" is not truly secure if the server (voting machine) is compromised and unaudited. Besides illustrating the flaws in the current crop of machines, I also described a proposal that is cheaper and more secure. Dean Anderson _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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