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Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 8972
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? 
Votes: 4 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 22, 2008 - 8:42 am: | 
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Top 5 things you can do
1. Get involved
pg 5-8
2. Hook up with experienced groups
pg 9
Freedom of Information Tips
pg 10-11
3. Protect & defend deceptive practices
pg 12-24
4. Protect & defend voter lists
pg 25-37
5. VOTING MACHINES:
Protect & defend vote counts
pg 38-71
Permission to reprint, excerpt, and distribute granted. Complete, Concise Tool Kit booklet: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/toolkit.pdf
HERE ARE SOME EXCERPTS:
#1 GET INVOLVED
In the end, this isn't about getting your favorite presidential candidate elected. This is about more permanent solutions: getting durable, ongoing citizen-based controls to oversee all elections. Elections ultimately control your daily life: your property rights, roads, the public safety, the justice system, and ultimately, the economy, your freedom, and your health...
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION TIPS
All states have open records laws. You have the right to see any document (with a limited number of exceptions). Part of every public official's job is providing public records. They know it, they're used to it, there's nothing confrontational about asking to see a record, people do it all the time. Here is a wonderful compendium of summarized public records laws for each state:
http://www.rcfp.org/ogg/index.php
Here is a useful site to generate professional-looking records requests:
http://www.splc.org/foiletter.asp
It helps to see examples. You can find hundreds of actual public records requests, including the documents provided in response to them and the occasional back-and-forth between requestor and public officials, by going to http://www.blackboxvoting.org. Use the search box at the top of the home page. Enter "records request" and it will find pages with examples for you.
...
#3 PROTECT AND DEFEND AGAINST DECEPTIVE PRACTICES
WATCH FOR: Last minute changes, polling place consolidation, confusing ballot design, shorting voting machines, malfunctioning machines, electronic poll book problems, supplies missing, not enough election workers, provisional ballot roadblocks, deceptive phone calls / fliers, deceptive ballot configurations, race left off some ballots, deceptive translations, snoop-friendly ballots, improper absentee ballot / envelope design, incorrect mail ballot insertions / delivery problems, cheat peeks
Part of election protection is knowing what to watch for. These things happen. The first time you see it, you can't quite believe it. That disbelief prevents citizens from taking crucial, immediate action. Elections are time sensitive. Keep your eyes wide open, vow to respond quickly and effectively.
DON'T WAIT UNTIL LAST MINUTE TO CHECK YOUR POLLING PLACE.
A Santa Clara County, California man was told by his online polling place finder that his address was in Gibbon, Iowa. If he had checked just as he was running out the door to vote, he would have experienced a delay.
During the 2008 primary, Black Box Voting tested the Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania Web site "polling place-finder" using the addresses on our own donor list. Dozens of valid addresses showed a polling place not found message.
Local newspapers often print polling place locations, and you can call your local elections division. Don't wait till the last minute, and before heading out the door, double-check the location of your polling place and help others find theirs.
DECEPTIVE TRANSLATIONS
Areas with substantial non-English speaking populations are required to provide voter information in appropriate languages. In one California location, the Spanish language voter information provided the wrong date for an election. In a New Mexico election, the Spanish description of a ballot item was so misleading that new ballots had to be mailed, leading to confusion over which ballot to use. In a Connecticut election, instructions which in English said "Vote for any two" said, in Spanish: "Vote for any OF the two", a translation which will literally cut votes in half for Spanish language voters.
It's important for language minority advocacy groups to review the non-English ballots, voter pamphlets and other election materials as far in advance of the election as possible. If you find a deceptive translation, find out who is responsible for checking translations to make sure they are accurate and what firm did the translation. Demand correction and report to all stakeholders and advocacy groups, including the appropriate ethnic advocacy groups.
CHEAT PEEKS
Early and absentee voting provide opportunities for "Cheat peeks" illegal peeks at results before Election Day.
In Pima County, Arizona audit logs show that early results were run in a controversial election. Candidates spend heavily on pre-election polling. Political polls sample a few hundred registered voters, who hopefully provide truthful answers to questions designed to elicit how they really will vote. Imagine now that one candidate (but not the other) gets access to something much more valuable: not hundreds, but tens of thousands of voters; not answers that are probably truthful, but the actual vote data.
No one insider or outsider should scan a single ballot before the end of Election Day. Some state laws specify that the ballots can be run through the tabulator if no one looks at the results (Hah!) and in Oregon, apparently, "insiders" can look if they don't tell. (Hah!)
GET AUDIT LOGS: Tabulator audit logs will show the cheat peeks, although insiders can alter the audit logs. You can request copies of the audit logs daily. If the logs themselves have not been tampered with, you will find an evidence trail showing when results reports were run.
#4: PROTECT AND DEFEND VOTER LISTS
HELP WITH: Register people to vote, confirm registration, save evidence, get photo ID;
WATCH FOR: Slowdowns or crashes in statewide voter registration databases, racial profiling, failure to enter new or updated registrations into the database timely, names left off list (no explanation), category switching, incorrect online feedback, problems with hyphenated names & typos, impossible numbers;
ADVANCED TOOLS: Statistics, voter list tracking
Register people to vote. Help people confirm that they are registered as an "active voter" (see distinctions between active, inactive, pending and cancelled). Get voters on "inactive" status reactivated. Save communications from the elections office as evidence. Help people get photo ID. Urge everyone to bring it to the polling place, whether or not the state requires it.
But IT'S NOT GOING TO BE ENOUGH TO REGISTER VOTERS AND HELP THEM VOTE. We already know that systematic voter disenfranchisement has been part of the game plan in the past. This year let's get off the defense and play some offense, and don't expect the old playbook to be repeated tit for tat.
You may have heard about voter list purging. Figures vary, but estimates of the number of voters wrongfully purged from 2000 Florida voter rolls range from 50,000 to over 90,000. Wrongfully purged voters were disproportionately Black. These eligible voters were not allowed to vote at all.
In 2008 for the first time, all 50 states will be using new statewide computerized voter registration databases. Most of what we're going to see in 2008 will not be called "purging." This year, we're going to find voter disenfranchisement in the statewide voter lists, especially in the "PENDING" area (new voter registrations not entered into the system, and registrations stuck in "pending" status); "CHANGE CATEGORIES," as voters are switched from one voter registration status to another, registrations are updated, and in TYPOS AND DATABASE QUIRKS that make database searches fail...
This year instead of 50-90,000 voters purged, we are looking at the potential to see FIVE TO 10 MILLION voter registrations stalled, changed, hit with typos or miscategorized.
These are exceptionally unwieldy problems and it is difficult to come up with meaningful citizen oversight actions, but with over 100 million voters on these new computerized lists, we need to try.
Black Box Voting received eye witness reports from three large counties in 2004 indicating that thousands of registrations were not entered before the election (even though election officials claimed they were). Insiders told us this was due to staffing shortages and/or the refusal of county officials to pay for overtime or temporary help. Here are excerpts from an e-mail received by Black Box Voting from one of the temporary employees hired to do this:
quote:"This year I answered the call to help the elections division enter all of the new registrations. It is my understanding that there was an entire warehouse of them somewhere and they were planning to hire a hundred people to enter them. Here is what happened:
The training began. The person in charge of that was on pain medication and my training turned out to be, well, totally wrong. I was taught to enter a specific code for certain kinds of registrations but sure enough, within a day we were having an "emergency" meeting about that particular code. She apologized for teaching the code incorrectly and we all moved on. We received no training materials, after the apology for teaching the code wrong we were given a very shoddy word document explaining a few things. There is no written manual.
The registration updates were about 3 months behind. We basically lied about when they were entered. If the form was submitted on say, the 1st of November, we were supposed to put that date in - even though I was doing it on the 4th of February ...
This above report illustrates something very important: NOT ALL VOTER REGISTRATION CARDS WERE ENTERED INTO THE SYSTEM AT ALL, UNTIL MONTHS LATER! Voters who were not entered in the database may be stripped of even their provisional ballot. We have seen boxes and boxes of "to be entered" cards after deadlines for getting them entered into the database. It is inconceivable that all these were sorted through to determine whether their provisional ballot should count.
Will updates and input to the voter registration database be done by in-house staff, overtime, or temporary employees?
What formula was used to project voter registration update & input needs?
Has the budget been approved for this?
What tracking and reporting system is available for internal controls and public oversight?
You can make an appointment and ask for a tour. Ask them to walk you through (literally) the process for entering and updating voter registrations.Ask about internal controls. Ask what tracking reports will be. Don't believe everything you hear.
The best way to get the real story is to develop a relationship with a clerk or temporary employee tasked with entering the information. Ask how it's really going.
#5 VOTING MACHINES:
PROTECT AND DEFEND THE VOTE COUNTS
PROCEDURAL IMPROVEMENTS: Transparency Project, Input to Output;
IDENTIFY PROBLEM LOCATIONS: History of indictments, missing internal control forms, public records obstruction, weak management, observation obstruction; past election problems; ELECTION PHASES: Pre-election; Early voting & absentee periods; Election Day; Election Night; Canvassing period; Post-election:
ADVANCED TOOLS: Voting machine examinations, Web snapshot tools, poll tape/central tabulation comparison, citizen ballot inspection audit, voting machine audit items
All computerized voting machines, as currently implemented, count votes in secret, and all election computers are under the control of administrators and programmers. All computers do what they are told to do by their administrators and programmers.
This is the core problem with voting machines.
Using these new systems, the citizenry has inadvertently ceded ultimate control over to government insiders and the vendors they select.
DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS MUST:
(a) Give the public full access to Freedom of Information on every aspect of the election.
(b) Count all votes in public (while maintaining individual political privacy)
(c) Allow the public to see for themselves that the votes being counted are the original votes, not counterfeit or substitute votes. "Chain of custody" must always be public.
IN THE NOVEMBER 2008 ELECTION:
Your right to sovereignty over your government will not be honored.
99 percent of the votes will be counted in secret on computers controlled by government insiders and vendors.
Your right to Freedom of Information will not be honored.
You will be unable to ascertain that chain of custody is intact.
It's too late to resolve these problems for 2008.
It's not too late for partial solutions.
It's not too late to collect important circumstantial evidence to assess the accuracy of the election.
Not a good situation. Despite passionate and always underfunded efforts by citizens for several years to get these issues addressed, we're up against it again in 2008. It's too late for new legislation or major changes. Let's work with what we have:
More on Procedural improvements, see pg 41-42 in Tool Kit 2008:
Precinct-based public hand counts
Transparency Projects
Input to Output
IDENTIFY PROBLEM LOCATIONS FOR EXTRA SCRUTINY:
History of indictments
Missing internal control forms
Public records obstruction
Weak management or poor quality controls
Observation obstruction
Past election problems
In the weeks leading up to the election, help gather information to predict problem locations. Let's treat these problem locations to extra scrutiny.
You can get an idea for past vote-counting problems by doing a news search, looking for incident reports filed by citizens, and by reading the text of any election contest lawsuits in the location you want to monitor. You can find incident reports by vendor and also by state and county (and/or municipality) at blackboxvoting.org and VotersUnite.org. If you Google "election incident reports" you can locate databases of reported incidents from 2004 and 2006.
PRE-ELECTION PHASE
Indictments, guilty pleas, convictions: Because computerized vote-counting is controlled by insiders, any locations with a history of corruption in key local government positions are particularly at risk for computerized vote-counting fraud. Key positions include county supervisors and commissioners (who often appoint elections officials); sheriffs, judges, county auditors and county clerks.
"Facts. Facts. Facts. Brick by brick we will build American democracy better than the Founders ever imagined possible."
Nancy Tobi, Election Defense Alliance
PUBLIC RECORDS: You can request to inspect or get copies of election-related records, including: voter complaints, poll worker incident reports, telephone Election Day support logs, and "rover" or technician logs. You can find many examples of these requests and responses in the state and county/municipality section of blackboxvoting.org.
BOOKKEEPING & RECONCILIATIONS: Vote counting is a form of bookkeeping. Properly run elections are accompanied by report forms showing how many voters signed in, how many ballots were provided, how many were cast, spoiled, and uncast. You will be surprised how often the numbers don't add up! Sometimes poll workers explain the discrepancies, but sometimes the numbers are off by hundreds with no explanation.
INTERNAL CONTROL FORMS: Some locations will report that they have had no problems, when in fact they don't provide any forms to poll workers to log the problems. If you ask to look at a blank copy of each form for poll workers, and also forms for tracking voting machines, seals, peripheral equipment, telephone reports, and technician visits you'll get a good idea as to whether adequate control systems are even being used. Filled-out copies will show how well they manage quality. This will help predict which locations are most likely to experience problems or fraud in November.
TAMPERING SYMPTOMS:
Voting machines could not "close" properly
Cartridge would not read
Tabulators failed to read some memory cards so technicians had to "extract the data"
Some cartridges or memory cards were temporarily misplaced
"We're not sure why votes were incorrect"
"The vendor is looking into it for us"
Voting machines had to be replaced during the election due to malfunctions
Broken or mismatched seals
Calibration problem
Counter didn't increment
Machine would not produce a "zero report" before votes cast
Electronic poll book said voter had already voted absentee, voter says no
OBSTRUCTIVE VS. COOPERATIVE: You can get a good idea how responsive each location is to public oversight by submitting a very simple one-item public records request and observing response. Are they prompt, complete, reasonably priced? Or do they inflate response timelines, price gouge, and obstruct?
Find out if the public (not just "politically appointed observers") is allowed to view the vote counting after the polls close. Find out if videotaping is allowed.
In most cases you'll find that local and state officials are more than willing to work on implementing solutions. If you spot significant problems or run into obstructive public officials, you may want to enlist the help of the voting rights committees for your political party, report to election protection groups, and build public awareness through the media. Focus on prevention. Try to spot problems ahead of time so improvements can be achieved before November elections.
FOR PERSONALIZED ADVICE, MENTORING AND INPUT
Contact citizen empowerment and volunteer helpers at Black Box Voting, Election Defense Alliance, or a local election protection group. You may also get support and direction from your preferred political party, and you can help connect your favorite candidates and party with election integrity organizations.
...
Get involved. Your election protection actions this year will be part of returning control over election processes to the people who own the government.
"You are not required to complete the task, yet you are not free to withdraw from it." Rabbi Tarfon
More: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/toolkit.pdf
If you would like to receive a printed copy of TOOL KIT 2008 send a request by e-mail with your name and mailing address. Printed pocket Tool Kit 2008 booklets will be mailed in August.
* * * * * |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 5128
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 22, 2008 - 9:20 am: |
|
This is a fantastic excerpt from the Tool Kit 2008. Thanks for making this excerpt available now. |
Carrick Baugh
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Cbaugh
Post Number: 8
Registered: 5-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 30, 2008 - 3:10 pm: |
|
Do you have any suggestions for printing this as a booklet?
If I try to print it as the pages are currently arranged (printing on both sides of the piece of paper, rather than gluing the blank sides of numerous pages together), I think the pages wont match up.
I.E. - They'll Number .. page 2(book cover), 3, 6, 7, 10, 11, 14, 15, 18, 19, etc. etc..
Am I wrong? - I haven't printed a book before. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 9192
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 30, 2008 - 4:03 pm: |
|
Ah, it is not layed out in booklet form, I haven't had time to do that and yes, I have had requests to do so. Carrick, if you let me know your mailing address I can send you some of the printed versions we're getting from the book printer, but we won't have them until mid August.
We do need to create a layout for do-it-yourself booklet printing. Basically when laid out for booklet printing, you just run the copies on your printer, making sure to match the right ones up back to back, then fold and staple in the middle. It's somewhat cumbersome to do the layout, and if someone can volunteer, I'll e-mail you the file in MS Word. Basically page 1 and the last page are on one sheet, page 2 and the second-to-last page on the next, and so forth until it all meets in the middle and, when folded, reads consecutively. |
Carrick Baugh
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Cbaugh
Post Number: 10
Registered: 5-2008
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 2 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 30, 2008 - 8:35 pm: |
|
Oh, no worries, thanks though. I'll just read it online. I was curious if there was a printer-setup trick I was missing.
--
I posted something about it in the Va - Fairfax Country forum, but it'd be nice if the forums worked in some way to help people learn how their county elections work, and where the flaws/breaches are. So they can call their delegates/reps, etc. Coming to this as a novice, and/or someone w/o much free time, its hard to know whats wrong in my voting precinct.
Do you know if there are other web pages/groups that do that? |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 9193
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 30, 2008 - 9:36 pm: |
|
You bring up a great point, and kind of read my mind. Elections really are all local. While doing everything else this year, we have been gradually restructuring the site away from lumping everything together, towards making each county's information easy to find.
We have the containers for each county, we have identified the voting systems for each county, and we have moved many of the old news items into each county, but we haven't yet populated each county with enough information to enable what you are suggesting.
But you are DEAD ON, Carrick. This is exactly the way it needs to go, for two reasons:
1) Because people are most interested in their own location
and
2) Because all politics REALLY IS local. You can get a lot done locally, but the learning curve has been so difficult that it has hampered this process.
I knew we were risking our constituency by switching to a local-based information archiving system, because at first, it's harder for people to find stuff (Tip: use the Past 24 hours link, or the "new today" link in the left column.)
But I think we need to move to an information organizing system that allows citizens to work, upload, comment, and collect information locally.
I've been surprised at how much we've been able to populate the county and municipality sections with at least some information (2 months ago, they were almost all EMPTY!). My goal for August is to get a LOT more information populated into the local sections, so that in September, when the Tool Kits really start to hit, we can start getting more guidance up for the new people who look at their own location.
Like the Tool Kit 2008, this was a vast undertaking. Over 5,000 locations, each with a different set of issues. First step was to make a "container" for each. Next step is to populate the containers with at least some information on local situations. (No one likes to come to an empty party. We need at least some relevant information in each location; not just facts, like voting system used, but news articles, local problems, issues, examples of local freedom of information actions). We're going to populate each local section as much as we can in August, then start transitioning into specific guidance.
Right now, the best way to get the specific tips is to e-mail and ask for suggestions. We do ask that each person who does this identify their location and whether they see themselves as a hunter-gatherer, networker, empowerer, analyzer or communicator (see Tool Kit 2008 Section 1.)
Glad to have you here Carrick, you're definitely on the right track. |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 5153
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, July 31, 2008 - 2:17 am: |
|
Bev,
Maybe eventually each State (& county or township) can also have a link to the threads about the voting machines, tabulators, and/or counting methods used there.
At the very least each local thread should include a post that tells people where to go to find the threads about different vendors, problems, vote-counting methods, etc. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 9196
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, July 31, 2008 - 10:01 am: |
|
We will put links in the county areas, but have to get the final updates in during August -- Several states are still pulling last minute switcheroos with their voting system. As you have probably noticed, I'm working on populating the vendor sections too, they're very incomplete.
People are finding information three ways:
1) Home page
2) by location
3) by vendor
This explains why I post an item about Webb County Texas ES&S machines in both Webb County, Texas and in the ES&S section.
High priority items are posted in locations that also put links on the home page.
For the records requests, as you've noticed, we are moving to a format that adds a status icon ("pending" "done" "obstructed" etc) and we are posting everything, instead of just some items.
 - Pending
 - Done
 - Done wonderfully
 - Cancelled
 - Denied
 - No response
 - Obstructed
And after analyzing the information, we will begin adding icons to items that raise concerns about process controls and quality management:
 - Quality Management problem
In August, we'll replace the "Document Archive" links on the home page with something new that I know people will find interesting.
And by the way, I removed some of the old smilies and added a few new ones:
 .....  .....  |
Caryl Brt
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brtova
Post Number: 25
Registered: 10-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, July 31, 2008 - 2:22 pm: |
|
Bev and everyone,
Once again, you all are phenomenal!!!
Caryl Brt |
Carrick Baugh
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Cbaugh
Post Number: 11
Registered: 5-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, July 31, 2008 - 2:29 pm: |
|
Cool, thats what I was imagining. Hopefully this will be more helpful than obvious or annoying.. I'll expand a little some to hopefully give some outsider's perspective.
Since so many counties use the same systems, and/or somewhat similar procedures, it seems like you could save a lot of time (in updating & reading) and increase clarity by having some sort of cataloging program(?), where each voting machine or procedure's flaws could be highlighted and explained. At the introduction to each County Forum could be a "Your Current Elections System" field, where a 'time line' would be generated - alongside the contact info for pertinent Elections/Govt officials' contact info.
I.E. - Fairfax uses AVS & ballot scanning, so the Admin would check those boxes (as well as the sub boxes like "Wireless Modem turned on after polls close for vote transmission") Same for all the pre and post voting procedures. When non-regional changes like fed mandates or voting machine technology changed, quick adjustments by the Admin would be applied to all the pertinent counties, and it'd all be uniform. - The 'flaws' could be linked to expanded explanations and discussion, and icons or text color could be used to note if/what action is being taken on it. If one county effectively fixed a flaw, a 'fixed box' in their 'elections system profile' could be selected, so that flaw-having counties would see (in the expanded explanation) a list of counties that had fixed it, with links to the fixed-counties' thread about it. Similarly, stats about the # and % of counties w/ the flaw, or working on it, could be present - all calculated & displayed by the 'program.'
If this were the case, it'd be really easy for residents to know what they need to do. Especially at the beginning, where big gaps in info about procedures would be blatant and screaming for residents to investigate & report back.
If the system is this uniform, it'd be easy then to rank the election soundness/vulnerability of counties and/or the rate at which residents are improving their elections - hopefully motivation for healthy competition/inspiration. (If I came on BBV and saw my county listed in the 20 most vulnerable, I'd freak & most people would too I imagine)
With a solid enough database, there could eventually be cost/analysis comparisons to show which counties are being ripped off by voting machine dealers or more importantly, the costs of fixing problems. I.E. - Legislators can't hide behind cost excuses, when its quickly shown that Whosville County? in Idaho made the exact same change at 1/3 the cost. Maybe people/legislators could eventually even use the forum as a way to become aware of each other and combine their efforts and buy services in bulk, or file parallel lawsuits.
I don't know anything about forums or programming, but I imagine there's something out there that works like this (kind of like when an online company asks you to select your interests from hundreds of options.) Just some ideas.. I'll be sure to keep an eye out and help if possible. |
Carrick Baugh
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Cbaugh
Post Number: 12
Registered: 5-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, July 31, 2008 - 2:58 pm: |
|
I thought on this for a while, b/c I was recalling how pathetic my middle/high school Civics/Govt education was. We memorized the name & order or U.S. Presidents instead of learning what our civic responsibilities were, let alone giving-a-go at exercising them.
This seemed like a good way to introduce/educate kids about their local systems, and teachers could make it a lesson/project to tackle a flaw/problem. (You can imagine the heat on a delegate/rep if one of the few high schools in his district made it their grade-dependent prerogative to address an issue - & incentive for him/her to speak to students.) The fact that its online means students can learn and work at their own pace & at their leisure too - mandatory if you want them to genuinely care/be interested/invested. My neighbor is a former civil servant & current middle school Civics teacher, and he'd love something like this. Yadda yadda yadda |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 9207
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, July 31, 2008 - 3:44 pm: |
|
It may be a different sort of problem than you envision, though. The core issue is counting votes in secret, and our right to sovereignty. If we allow a handful of government insiders to count votes in secret, on a computer they control along with the vendors they choose, we have transferred power. So it's a bit thornier than trying to make a secure voting machine.
The problem is, the insider is the risk and you cannot secure a system against its own administrator and programmer.
Pages 39-43 of Tool Kit 2008 address this (PDF pages 20-21, page-numbered paged 39-43).
We need to focus on finding ways to put the vote counts back into public viewability, rather than trying to work the security equation. Three methods are of interest:
1) Hand counts in public
2) Transparency project: A separate, off the shelf, non ballot-counting scanner is purchased and ballots are scanned onto a disk and released to the public on CD or on the Internet
3) Video project: Ballots are taken out of ballot box in public view, dealt like a deck of cards allowing anyone who wants to to videotape the ballot faces in order to compare the ballots (input) to the machine results (output)
The litmus test for what makes a better system needs to focus on making sure the viewing is public, in order to retain public sovereignty, which is a key principle in the Declaration of Independence. |
Carrick Baugh
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Cbaugh
Post Number: 13
Registered: 5-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, July 31, 2008 - 5:47 pm: |
|
Oh yeah, I agree - I gathered that from your documentary (which I saw on HBO.) I used 'system' not in regards to the machine alone, but the entire elections process (from ballot printing, to cast ballot storage and criminal liability for elections officials/poll workers/machine employees.)
The reason I think a visible 'time-line' is nice, is that people can see the exact moment/point at which their vote is completely corruptible. If I can look, and quickly learn where/when "in my neighborhood" the vote goes out of State/citizen control.. I'm going to at minimum call my Delegate and ask for the logic behind it, if not naggingly feel compelled to serve as a witness.
Lots of people vote, and some know enough not to have blind faith in the system, but even then, who knows where its happening or what they can do. If I knew where the flaws were, and that I could mend them, I don't think I could vote and walk away without feeling like the entire exercise was superficial, perverted and hollow. Like I'd been swindled..
If people could see how complex election planning is, all the work, redundancies, and legal supports in place to protect it, and then see that when its all done, that we hand it to paid unaccountable strangers, they'd flip, and feel compelled to act - if for no other reason than b/c everyone hates being stolen from and treated like a fool.
Like money lending, you can tell someone banks are crooked and they'll feel uneasy, but they'll still borrow to buy their house. Tell them that the 0% limited APR rate is a scam to bilk them later, that they should request a (whatever) rate loan, and they'll demand it. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 9393
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 - 8:56 am: |
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Good post, Carrick.
I've been corresponding quite a bit with Paul Lehto, who often does a masterful job of cutting through the bull. Basically, when a private corporation claims that they own the heart of democracy -- the counting of the vote, they have become a trespasser. Principles in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution clearly place The People in a sovereign position over the instruments of government that we have created. We exercise our sovereignty by (1) voting or (2) mass noncompliance or (3) armed revolution.
Method (1) is the preferred choice. The idea that a corporation would claim the right to own the process through which we exercise sovereignty is preposterous. It's usurpation and trespassing.
And here's what's more preposterous: Not only are the vendors trespassing, but they attempt to reverse the equation by treating us as trespassers, which they do each time they deny a Freedom of Information request while they are still in control of the vote-counting process.
And as for the process being controlled by the government -- as it is in part in Oklahoma -- another preposterous idea is that the government should be its own watchdog. You can't watchdog yourself. |
scott kravitz
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Oaklandis
Post Number: 1
Registered: 9-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, September 20, 2008 - 8:22 pm: |
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Do you know if there currently are any Secretaries of State that are also directing campaigns (as happened in Florida and Ohio)? |
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