Conason writes in Salon today about blackboxvoting.com and Bev Harris

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2003/10/27/diebold/print.html

Joe Conason's Journal

Why aren't Republicans more disturbed by the threat of computer cheating?

Oct. 27, 2003  |  Newsweek looks into black-box voting

This fall, at every venue I visit to sign books and talk about politics, at least one worried citizen asks whether I believe rogue computer software can steal the next election for the Republicans. Others nod, murmur, and wonder aloud: What can we do about this threat to democracy? Why should we vote or encourage others to vote when the system can be gamed? How do we convince the mainstream media to cover this crucial story?

Web journalists have been probing the real and potential problems of electronic voting most notably on Black Box Voting.org and Black Box Voting.com, the Web sites Bev Harris runs, and in Salon -- but it is true that major media outlets have devoted little attention to the possibility that future elections could be untraceably rigged. Today, Newsweek tech reporter Steven Levy examines that dire prospect in the magazine's Nov. 3 issue. As he explains: "After you punch the buttons to choose your candidates, you may get a final screen that reflects your choices -- but there's no way to tell that those choices are the ones that ultimately get reported in the final tally. You simply have to trust that the software inside the machine is doing its job ... The best minds in the computer-security world contend that the voting terminals can't be trusted."
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Bolstering such concerns are the findings of top computer-security experts such as Avi Rubin of Johns Hopkins and David Dill of Stanford. Rubin, who was given a copy of the Diebold voting computers' source code several months ago, has declared its protections against fraud to be worthless. Dill told Newsweek that the risk of a stolen election is "extremely high."

The sickening irony of this situation is that it developed from congressional efforts to preclude another fiasco like Florida 2000. Now Rep. Rush Holt, D.-N.J., has proposed legislation that would require a separate printed record of every computerized vote so that recounts can be audited with a paper trail. But Rep. Bob Ney, the committee chairman, opposes Holt's Voter Confidence Act. Ney happens to be a Republican from Ohio. But why aren't Republicans -- many of whom fret incessantly about "ballot security" in black and Latino neighborhoods -- more disturbed by the threat of computer cheating?

Thanks for posting this!

I remember when he was one who wanted the House resolution to change French to Freedom. His office was strange, and they were serious.

Sweet.

Helping America Vote? by Matthew Pascarella
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=287&row=0


Matthew Pascarella is a student at Marymount Manhattan College in NYC and is a staff researcher for Greg Palast. This article was influenced by the work of investigative journalist Greg Palast and voting experts Bev Harris, Rebecca Mercuri, and Kim Alexander. And oh yeah—the 12th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.

on this, but it doesn't seem like it is in the mainstream yet for either party. I have emailed my congressman twice with no response, and he is a liberal Dem. Maybe the Dems don't want to look whiney already when there hasn't even been an election yet. I saw a preview of a local news station that will be running a feature this week, and from the blurb it appears that the story will focus on "could a hacker steal the election" rather than could the government steal the election. I think proponents have sucsessfully spun it in this direction, so that when the public is assured that the machines "are not on the internet" they will accept them as a step in the right direction away from chads.

If Freda is so aggressively skeptical about all this BBV stuff, these days?