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| (US) 8/06 - 'Criteria for an honest e... |
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From the Mailbag
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mailbag
Post Number: 82
Registered: 10-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, August 2, 2006 - 9:19 am: | 
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(From the admin: This came by e-mail, and I am publishing it and providing a rebuttal because the individual who sent it was a campaign manager, was a candidate, and is on a county-level Democratic Committee.)
quote:THOUGHTS ON ELECTION PROCESS
CONCENTRATION OF AUTHORITY IN SECRETARY OF STATE
This may not be a bad idea. If the Secretary sets rigorous, mandatory policy for all of the Supervisors, it provides only a single point for scrutiny of policy, purge lists, etc. It worked re purge lists held by Hood in 2004. The State office allows better visibility than trying to track 67 Supervisors.
POLL WORKERS
The selection of poll workers should be conducted as follows: The chief judge at each polling place should be appointed by the SOE. All other judges/workers at each polling place should be appointed in equal numbers by the Executive Committees of the Dem & Rep Party. This will eliminate all judges of one party or appointment of DINOs.
VOTING MACHINES
The only perfect way to get an accurate count is by use of paper ballots.
However, machines are here to stay and the following should be observed:
*No voting machine with proprietary software should be purchased. If Las Vegas prohibits proprietary software, so should we in the conduct of our most sacred duty.
*Clearly, a paper trail is required, a printout read and approved by the voter, to allow a recount to be possible.
*Every machine should be tested for hardware integrity.
*Each machine in each precinct should be tested for software integrity. Source code should be reviewed for extraneous instructions.
*No voting machine should be permitted to have any external input/output other than 60~ power after hardware and software certification. Power inlets must be adequately isolated from any data processing hardware in the machine.
*Immediately subsequent to hardware and software certification, the machine should be secured until set up for operation in the polling place.
*At the close of polls, the appropriate number of printouts from each machine shall be signed by all election judges/poll workers, the machines immediately secured and submitted to the control of the courts, and all machine tallies totaled manually before reporting the grand total by telephone to SOE. Technicians will not be allowed to repair a machine after certification. A machine that demonstrates a problem should be immediately secured. Each polling place should have a spare machine to activate as necessary. If a dysfunctional machine fails to print its report, it should be repaired by a technician under court supervision for retrieval of data.
RECOUNTS
If it is still possible to hack the machines, or all of the precautions above are not followed, there is still the possibility that enough votes can be flipped so that a recount is not automatically required. Perhaps we need another standard other than the supposed closeness of the vote. The only thing I can think of, and would probably meet stiff resistance, might be the case where the tally varies by more than x% (2%?) from the exit polls. That would trigger a requirement for a recount of 3% of the vote, and if that identifies discrepancies, a full recount would be required.
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Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 5494
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, August 2, 2006 - 9:45 am: |
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I have invited the individual to enter into a public debate of the issues here (under real name, of course). I believe the concepts in his position piece would tend to undermine the very nature of our democratic republic.
quote:CONCENTRATION OF AUTHORITY IN SECRETARY OF STATE - This may not be a bad idea. If the Secretary sets rigorous, mandatory policy for all of the Supervisors, it provides only a single point for scrutiny of policy, purge lists, etc. It worked re purge lists held by Hood in 2004. The State office allows better visibility than trying to track 67 Supervisors.
The genius of democracy is in the dispersed nature of its power. It's messy, but stable. When you concentrate power into the hands of a few, it's dangerous to the freedom of the citizens who actually own the government. It's much more feasible to corrupt one person than 67.
quote:POLL WORKERS - The selection of poll workers should be conducted as follows: The chief judge at each polling place should be appointed by the SOE. All other judges/workers at each polling place should be appointed in equal numbers by the Executive Committees of the Dem & Rep Party. This will eliminate all judges of one party or appointment of DINOs.
This eliminates other parties. It concentrates the power to control elections into the hands of just the two major parties. Our membership here at BBV indicates that there is a massive citizen base in the "independent" category. I think we need to avoid the concept of any political party appointing poll workers or elections judges. I'd like to see any citizen be able to apply for that position, and especially including independents, Libertarians, Greens, and others. Any citizen should be able to volunteer. If the Democrats want more poll workers and elections judges, go out and beat the bushes and recruit them, but the citizenry themselves should be the selection pool that elections workers are drawn from. I wouldn't be opposed to the parties being able to review the list and lodge a complaint if the pool of elections workers is made up disproportionately of a single party, however.
quote:VOTING MACHINES - The only perfect way to get an accurate count is by use of paper ballots.
However, machines are here to stay and the following should be observed:
*No voting machine with proprietary software should be purchased. If Las Vegas prohibits proprietary software, so should we in the conduct of our most sacred duty.
*Clearly, a paper trail is required, a printout read and approved by the voter, to allow a recount to be possible.
*Every machine should be tested for hardware integrity.
*Each machine in each precinct should be tested for software integrity. Source code should be reviewed for extraneous instructions.
*No voting machine should be permitted to have any external input/output other than 60~ power after hardware and software certification. Power inlets must be adequately isolated from any data processing hardware in the machine.
*Immediately subsequent to hardware and software certification, the machine should be secured until set up for operation in the polling place.
*At the close of polls, the appropriate number of printouts from each machine shall be signed by all election judges/poll workers, the machines immediately secured and submitted to the control of the courts, and all machine tallies totaled manually before reporting the grand total by telephone to SOE. Technicians will not be allowed to repair a machine after certification. A machine that demonstrates a problem should be immediately secured. Each polling place should have a spare machine to activate as necessary. If a dysfunctional machine fails to print its report, it should be repaired by a technician under court supervision for retrieval of data.
1. "machines are here to stay" is a propaganda technique called "foregone conclusion." It implies that the issue has actually been vetted out by smarter people than the citizenry. This issue has NOT been vetted by the citizenry, or even put up for a vote -- or even provided any viable discussion in public town meetings.
2. A "paper trail" is not the solution. Paper ballots filled out by the citizen's own hand is step one (unless a citizen has a disability such that this is not possible, in which case an alternate method should be provided for that citizen) There is a very significant difference between acting on your ballot to make choices and "verifiability" of being able to check a ballot from a printer to see if it is what you want. One requires action by the citizen to make a choice, the other requires proofreading skills, and assertiveness and even some technical skills as a user to cancel a vote and redo it if needed. Also, "so they CAN be recounted" means they will not necessarily EVER be looked at by human eyes, rendering them meaningless if the machine count is off by more than the miniscule percentage required for a hand recount.
3. There are no tests that will guarantee hardware or software integrity. Source code for the software can be secondarily controlled by the operating system or the bootloader. Even the top scientists are coming to agreement that it is not possible to really secure a system, and that the only real protection is auditing.
4. The additional points he raises are similarly problematic. The costs would skyrocket, especially by comparison with hand counted paper ballots. Others here can take them point by point if you like.
quote:RECOUNTS - If it is still possible to hack the machines, or all of the precautions above are not followed, there is still the possibility that enough votes can be flipped so that a recount is not automatically required. Perhaps we need another standard other than the supposed closeness of the vote. The only thing I can think of, and would probably meet stiff resistance, might be the case where the tally varies by more than x% (2%?) from the exit polls. That would trigger a requirement for a recount of 3% of the vote, and if that identifies discrepancies, a full recount would be required.
The machines will always be hackable. Why use exit polls and when you can just COUNT THE BALLOTS?
If you want to look at your own bank statements and cancelled checks, and your bookkeepers have "stiff resistance" -- who is the employer of the bookkeeper? If you are the employer, you have a right to look. A bookkeeper who shows "stiff resistance" to allowing you to look at even two percent of your own documents should encounter stiff resistance when he/she tries to show up for work the next day.
Citizens, it's up to us to take this process back. The letter above shows the thinking of a candidate and local Democratic party leader. They aren't going to put elections back in the hands of the citizens.
It's up to us to take it back.
Use the Citizen's Tool Kit to Take Back Elections. Take an action -- any action, and start this pendulum swinging the other way.
* * * * *
"Regardless of size, just 1-3 people do all the work in any group. Better to have 10 groups of 10 people than one group with 100 people. That way, at least 10 people will get things done."
(-- John Brakey, an Arizona citizen)
You own your government, not the other way around. This is your task: Pick 1 thing and just DO IT. Then lead, mentor or organize 9 people to do the same thing.
Citizen Tool Kit to Take Back Elections:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/toolkit.pdf
Begins 8/1/06
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Bruce Sims
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Ubetchaiam
Post Number: 856
Registered: 06-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, August 2, 2006 - 12:22 pm: |
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"because the individual who sent it was a campaign manager, was a candidate, and is on a county-level Democratic Committee.)"; this person needs to go to a 'democracy school' http://www.constitution411.org/dem_schl.php
as an example; really scary that this person was a candidate for public office, but I guess not on reflection given who occupies the White House and Congress. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 5503
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 6:28 am: |
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He is sincere, and I have invited him here to debate these points. I'm hoping to learn more about how it comes to be that these kinds of positions are adopted. Who are the sources of information and what circle of influence helps to develop these positions.
* * * * *
"Regardless of size, just 1-3 people do all the work in any group. Better to have 10 groups of 10 people than one group with 100 people. That way, at least 10 people will get things done."
(-- John Brakey, an Arizona citizen)
You own your government, not the other way around. This is your task: Pick 1 thing and just DO IT. Then lead, mentor or organize 9 people to do the same thing.
Citizen Tool Kit to Take Back Elections:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/toolkit.pdf
Begins 8/1/06
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Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 742
Registered: 01-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 8:04 am: |
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"*No voting machine should be permitted to have any external input/output other than 60~ power after hardware and software certification. Power inlets must be adequately isolated from any data processing hardware in the machine." These connections should be removed before hardware and software certification would begin, unless they're part of a test aparatus. |
Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 743
Registered: 01-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 9:46 am: |
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Also, source code review in itself is meaningless; I can tell you 'this is the source code' and put something entirely different on the machine. You have to be able to compile the code all the way to executable and check it against what is actually stored on the machine. If you can't, it's meaningless. |
Jose Ivey
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Urbanvoyeur
Post Number: 108
Registered: 11-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, August 9, 2006 - 11:47 am: |
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Local vs National elections
Part of the issue here, I think, is what happens in local vs national elections.
In the USA, we are dominated by two parties and we give the states control over the congressional and other electoral district maps.
The result has been extremely partisan districts at every level. With very few exceptions, one party or the other completely dominates the district.
It can be argued that these local elections (city, state assemblies, house of rep ) have a bigger collective impact on the country than the single national election (president)
Why does this matter in hand counts, supervisors and poll workers?
First, in many parts of the country, you will be hard pressed to find enough people of both parties to do the counting in each *local* district. State wide sure, but not at the CD, state assembly, city council district/ward level.
Second, as shown in Florida and Ohio, Secretaries of State can be partisan and will act in the interests of their party, whether they are appointed or elected. They are probably not the best arbiters of neutrality at the state & local level.
Just about any hand count at the local level is easily skewed by direct partisan meddling. Lost ballot boxes, deliberate miscounts, etc. Relatively few votes need to be shifted to effect the desired outcome and most local hand counts will not occur with intense scrutiny
The obvious solution is tamper resistant voting machines that are difficult to skew local elections - simply because there are so many and elections and so many candidates. Not enough time or money to prepare an adequate tamper and too many choices to control.
On the other hand, our two-party dominated system means that in national (president) and state-wide elections (senator, governor) there is quite a bit of money and power at stake to the winner. So much so that the means to tamper with even well protected machine systems will be found.
This tampering is made feasible in part by the limited number of elections (1 pres, 50 gov's, 100 senators) and the staggered infrequency of these elections – 4-6 years. You have both the time to prepare and a limited number of outcomes to control.
The obvious solution is hand counts which are nearly impossible to skew on a national & state wide level given the number of competing interests and number of people both voting & counting.
So rather than looking for a magic bullet, maybe we accept that both hand counts and machinery have inherent flaws, and a more seriously consider the hybrid: machine and hand counts. Taken together, their strengths overcome the flaws of the other out in light of the problem they are intended to fix.
Machines will always be vulnerable in the presidential and state-wide office elections. Hand counts can keep them honest. But hand counts are will always be vulnerable to in local elections – and machines count can keep them honest.
You could go so far as to mandate that in local elections, where there is a disagreement, machine count wins whereas in national or state office, hand count wins. |
Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 758
Registered: 01-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, August 9, 2006 - 12:06 pm: |
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That one party or another 'completely dominates a district' to the point that you can't field at least one observer from each party for each ballot box's counting within reasonable driving distance hasn't been proven to my satisfaction.
The idea that either of these 2 methods is more prone to be a protection locally or nationally ignores that all ballots are counted locally.
Jose said : "It can be argued that these local elections (city, state assemblies, house of rep ) have a bigger collective impact on the country than the single national election (president)"; not lately, did your local elections get you into a war that's bankrupting the federal government, allow toxic output of businesses to reach a new high and infringe constitutional Bill of Rights protections nationwide? The president (expecially a bad, lawless one) can have a great deal more effect on people than your local politicians, GWB being an excellent case in point. |
Jose Ivey
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Urbanvoyeur
Post Number: 110
Registered: 11-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, August 9, 2006 - 12:40 pm: |
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Brant
No doubt that in every district there are people of differnt parties.
But the idea is to find enough, willing observers (if not counters) of other party affiliations to make the process valid. One person walking around a room of 5-10 counting groups is not enough. To keep it fair to all sides, the observers/counters should be from the same district that the elections is being held in.
It is not so easy in some these districts.
Regarding local counting in an national election:
It's a matter of statistical impact and coordination. Hard to convince thousands of hand counters state or nation wide to reliably lie in one direction. Small coordinated groups have minimal impact when diluted by millions of votes and the statistical weight of the other votes would make many (most?) of the attempts blantantly obvious.
In local elections however, only small numbers & groups are involved. It doesn't take much.
Moreover, in the presidential election, most CD's are pre-decided by gerrymandering. Cheating here is moot (in the pres election) Up for grabs is an excruciatingly small number of districts where hand counting can be very closely monitored.
Regarding the impact of local elections:
State legislatures decide the district map for the state.
The House of representatives makes all appropriations (for the defense, taxes, etc). They are elected in (local) congressional districts.
The House of Rep must authorize funding & periodically re-authorize for all foriegn military interventions lating longer than 90 days (war powers act)
I think the domination of the one party over all three branches of our government has made the office of the president appear more powerful than it historically has been and more powerful than it constitutionally is.
(Message edited by urbanvoyeur on August 09, 2006) |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 3157
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, August 9, 2006 - 1:44 pm: |
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The difficulty of getting enough observers from all parties is that we're out of practice and have become complacent. It's not an inherent difficulty and can be solved over time. This can be remedied with citizens gradually becoming informed that they must get directly involved if they want to have a democracy.
More people need to become aware of the extent of the problems, in such a way that they are roused and inspired to get involved rather than to withdraw further. Seeing the example of people who are making a difference--often against apparently huge odds--can help others realize their own untapped power and potential. |
Jose Ivey
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Urbanvoyeur
Post Number: 111
Registered: 11-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, August 9, 2006 - 2:34 pm: |
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Catherine
Perhaps it is a matter of participation.
Though looking at several districts in GA, AZ, MA, NY and TX, you would be hard pressed to find more than sprinkling of non-dominant party in the voter reg rolls.
Data at fairdata.org, techpolitics.org and cspan commonly show party affiliations and winning margins in HOR elections to be >60 for one party over the other. Margins in excess of 90% are not uncommon. http://www.techpolitics.org/congress/fh5.php
I am not convinced that with the current gerrymandered districts in place, meaningful bi-partisan hand count oversite in local elections is possible, even with expanded particiaption. Not that I'm right. Just not yet convinced. |
Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 762
Registered: 01-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, August 10, 2006 - 5:24 am: |
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They don't need all three branches of the government, they only need 2, the legislature and the presidency. The only reason they need all three is if they fail to pass the laws they need to do what they want (and why would they fail if they have the legislature and the presidency?), and not run afoul of the constitution until they amend it to suit their intent. That GWB's administration has run afoul of the constitution on several points just shows their lack of ability to plan and any imagination. |
Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 783
Registered: 01-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, August 14, 2006 - 5:43 am: |
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Jose what is HOR? |
Jose Ivey
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Urbanvoyeur
Post Number: 122
Registered: 11-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, August 14, 2006 - 7:00 am: |
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Sorry. House of Representatives. |
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