Political machinations

For the first time, vote-rigging may become a serious issue at a general election - perhaps in just three months' time. With several cases of alleged vote-rigging and fraud already under investigation - in Reading, Birmingham, Cheshire, Derbyshire, Lancashire, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire - the Electoral Commission is pressing guidelines on detecting voting fraud on senior police and election officers.

Snip

Beverley Harris and Andy Stephenson, US computer experts who researched this question in their recent book, Black Box Voting, have shown that electronic control from remote modems is invisible to the election supervisor, and party observers cannot see the intrusion. It leaves no record, even in the audit log, if an illicit "back-door" is used to get into the program.

snip

Stephenson also discovered that Jeffrey Dean, the senior programmer of the Diebold Gems central tabulator system counting a third of the votes in the Bush-Kerry election in 37 states, has a police record. He pleaded guilty to 23 counts of embezzlement involving sophisticated manipulation of computer accounting records.

snip

We must be extremely cautious of the surge towards electronic voting. Before importing US voting systems into Britain, any software secrets in the machine technology must be made transparent. Software must be properly certified, and there must be paper trails. If these conditions cannot be met, electronic voting should not be introduced. There are better ways of increasing turnout than simply changing the voting technology.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/egovernment/comment/0,12767,1403546,00.html

-Hoot

Blackwell (a name you can trust) is attempting to force all Ohio
counties to pick either ES&S or Diebold, by something like Feb. 9.
I'm mentioning this here again, because there were a couple of
threads about it earlier but I don't think it's getting a lot
of attention. Just coincidence that this Ohio Mafioso tries to
push this through around the time of State of the Union, etc.
A competing voting machine company sued him; this may slow him
down for a while.

It's the Globalization of Electoral Fraud.

Good going, Andy.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: February 3, 2005
Filed at 7:49 p.m. ET

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- Three months after the presidential election, one of the nation's biggest makers of touch-screen voting machines has created a companion printer that spits out paper records.

The prototype that Diebold Inc. is now touting is exactly what some critics of the ATM-like machines have been demanding for several years.

Even so, paper records alone are not enough to satisfy computer scientists who say transparency in the electronic machines' design and software must complement paper backups." (more at the link)

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-E-Voting-Printers.html?oref=login


TBO;24/7

Good job.

This was an interesting section from the article:

Meanwhile, the government remains keen on electronic voting and is aiming at "an e-enabled election some time after 2006". Will this raise turnout or simply increase the risk of fraud? Several pilots have been held. In 2003, six local authorities electronically counted ballot papers where votes had also been cast electronically. Surprisingly, there has been no manual checking of the e-counting results.

However, a full-blown test run of e-voting has been carried out elsewhere, with very instructive results. It shows that e-voting is neither secure nor tamper-proof, and allegations are surfacing that it may have affected the result. This dry run was the recent US presidential election.

And congrats to you...

Now, when will this be published in NYT and WaPo, and Newsweek for that matter! ;)

Excellent!

Even if it still links you to BBV.

:thumbsup: :hi:

all these unanswered questions about BBV, why do you support fixing them with a paper trail ? Wouldn't it be better to fight like hell to get rid of BBV all together? I'm willing to wait until the vote is hand counted. I know your the expert ,but I really need to know this.

in fact I never use the words paper and trail together when talking about voting. I want a voter verified paper ballot....combined with proper auditing...got it?

Hand counting is highly impractical...optical scans with proper audits and stringent controls can be safely utilized.

The ballot free DRE's...well those I cannot condone nor do I approve of.

looks like * has convinced blair how to get re-elected eh??

great story andy!!
we love you!!

fly

The risks of paperless DRE machines are large. Programming errors are an inevitable fact of life given current technology. With these paperless DRE machines, there is nothing that can stop a determined group from achieving large-scale election theft. We see no reason why major problems will not occur, including obviously messed up elections, election of incorrect candidates, and, certainly, disillusioned and disenfranchised voters.

DRE voting systems that use voter-verified paper ballots have natural safeguards against numerous forms of fraudulent election behavior. Current DRE systems have no such safeguards.

interesting isn't it. They must wnt to try and keep market share.