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| (US) 12/06 - Why condemning VVPATS is... |
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Bob Dean
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Rcdean
Post Number: 6
Registered: 01-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, December 3, 2006 - 11:27 am: | 
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I've read some pretty damning statements about VVPATS on this board recently. Vilifying VVPATS is unwise for reasons I will explain. Doing so may well be a clever trap that winds up letting vendors off the hook and subverting our own cause. We must be careful not to allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good.
True, the current various implementations of voter verified paper audit trail systems for DREs are imperfect. But they are monumentally better than naked, black box DREs without VVPATs.
Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars have been sunk into DREs without VVPATs in 15 states. The most politically likely outcome is that they will remain in place. Local politicians who participated in their purchase are highly unlikely to recommend the embarrassment of junking them and starting over.
The best we can hope for in many localities where naked DREs are already in place is to persuade them to purchase retrofits of some sort of VVPAT mechanisms. But those vendors and politicians who seek to subvert our election process through naked DREs will surely use any comments from us about the inadequacies of VVPATs to oppose any change. Therefore trashing VVPATs does a disservice to our cause.
For communities planning purchases of EV systems, we are probably well advised to oppose any form of DREs and support opti-scan systems, the least worst solution, as the NIST report suggests.
We must resolutely and adamantly oppose the purchase of naked DREs. But where the locals are unalterably persuaded to buy DREs, we must be in a position to demand they also buy VVPATs for them.
Surely we can and should identify precise shortcomings in specific VVPAT products, and perhaps even suggest specific improvements. But it is wise for us to withhold blanket vilification of VVPATs at this stage. I can easily see such rhetoric coming back to bite us and providing ammo to those vendors who prefer to sell naked DREs for reasons that it seems can only be nefarious.
Bob Dean |
Saul Iversen
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Malachite
Post Number: 84
Registered: 07-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, December 3, 2006 - 12:30 pm: |
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I think it would be helpful for you to point out some specific statements that you take exception to on this site.
Thanks! |
Bev Harris
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Site_admin
Post Number: 319
Registered: 10-2006
Best of Black Box? 
Votes: 2 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, December 3, 2006 - 3:07 pm: |
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Bob,
Welcome to Black Box Voting. We allow a spirited debate here and all viewpoints are welcome. Our approach is to have a GENUINE citizen debate and arrive at solutions that will stand the test of time, while preserving the citizenry's fundamental right to information and oversight with our own elections.
In my opinion, the Holt Bill, HR 550, actually solves very little, while institutionalizing the removal of fundamental civil rights.
Basically, your points boil down to:
- Because you believe that it is politically likely outcome that DREs will remain in place, we should not fight VVPATs.
- Politicians who participated in the purchase of DREs will fight junking them due to embarrassment.
- "The best we can hope for" is retrofitting the DREs.
- Therefore trashing VVPATs does a disservice to our cause.
- "Don't allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good"
Talking points
The last two points are canned talking points developed for an alliance of groups pushing the Holt Bill. I have heard the identical phraseology from several different vectors. I have a question: Where were these developed and how are they being distributed?
A VVPAT is "good"?
By the way, saying "the perfect should not be the enemy of the good," and then pointing to VVPAT technology as a "good," while at the same time admitting that it isn't very good, is a strategy that I find unpersuasive.
Civil rights aren't an area where we should compromise
- Sometimes, and certainly in the case of civil rights, one shouldn't advise settling for "the best you can hope for" and then suggest something that remains a violation of civil rights.
"I know you don't want to sit at the back of the bus. But in this political climate, the best you can hope for is the right to sit anywhere on the bus only when no whites happen to be on the bus."
That was a political reality, but no one I know would recommend settling for it. As a general rule, it's a bad idea to compromise when fundamental civil rights are at stake.
If you'd like an analysis of why the Holt Bill, HR 550, institutionalizes the removal of civil rights and therefore cannot be considered acceptable (and indeed, must be repudiated and removed if it passes), I'll be happy to engage in that here.
It's not our job to protect public servants from their own embarrassment
You are right that many public officials will be embarassed about their support of paperless DREs. No one I know wants to relieve them of their embarrassment.
They tromped on our civil rghts, wasted taxpayer money, and endangered the country. At the very least, an appropriate consequence should be acute embarrassment, if not removal from their right to act as our representatives. There is no reason citizens who were victimized by the poor judgement of their representatives should be obligated to help them along by making it less embarrassing for them.
Let's go for real solutions, not buzz words
We need to stand fast for getting REAL solutions, not buzz words that serve as an end run around real improvements in the system.
Those real solutions need to start by defining the minimum things an election system must do in order to serve the citizenry.
I'm not talking about voting machine standards. I'm talking about basic things like:
- what information does it provide that enables citizens to authenticate the election (from start to finish).
- How cost effective is that information, and how usable is its form? (A system that cannot be understood without computer science expertise is obviously less "usable" to the citizenry that a system that relies merely on one's ability to count.)
- What provisions does the system make for citizens to observe and authenticate the chain of custody?
- How timely is the provision of information? ("timely" in the context of an election means it must provide enough time to authenticate BEFORE the wrong person is put in office)
- What provisions are made to make the information cost effective, so that it is truly accessible to the citizenry?
- What are the provisions to make sure that "any person" -- the standard used in Freedom of Information law -- can access the information needed to authenticate the election? Does the system defend the citizen's right to get the information, or cede it over to exempt trade secrets?
- What consequences are there if a public official violates civil rights by preventing citizens from accessing the information they need to authenticate the election?
Real reform starts with Freedom of Information
Elections used to be run in a way that was consistent with the citizens right to Freedom of Information. That's no longer the case in most jurisdictions.
We need to view elections in terms of civil rights. We own our government. We can't exercise meaningful oversight unless we have the ability to authenticate our own elections. To do that we need timely access to all the information, in addition to the right to view chain of custody points.
Faulty assumptions
The "VVPAT" concept -- as with most concepts in the Holt Bill -- makes a lot of assumptions, and my experience on the front lines indicates to me that the assumptions are invalid.
Or, as Paul Lehto wrote, in many cases the assumptions are hallucinatory. If we are supposed to do something "realistic" let's start with a bill that doesn't make hallucinatory assumptions about citizen access to elections information. |
Bob Dean
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Rcdean
Post Number: 7
Registered: 01-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, December 3, 2006 - 5:41 pm: |
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Saul wrote:
I think it would be helpful for you to point out some specific statements that you take exception to on this site.
Thanks!
Saul, here are a couple of the most recent.
Bob Fleischer 12/2/06
The paper trail of a VVPAT system is deceptively similar to a stack of voter-marked ballots, but it is not the same. If there is systematic error -- or deliberate tampering -- in a VVPAT system that paper trail is the only hope of discovering such. In a stack of voter-marked ballots, the only "errors" are the errors of individual voters in marking. In a VVPAT system, errors in the system may also be in the paper record.
The VVPAT paper trail is not the same as a stack of ballots.
Bob Fleischer 12/1/06
Note that VVPAT's have been shown in studies to be so unreliable (voters rarely check them completely and accurately -- see Selker's work) that no serious researcher should ever again consider them a practical solution to the problem.
Then there was the internetnews.com piece posted here that originally broke the NIST story on 11/30. It's a good report in many respects, but half way through it meanders away from the NIST report and starts reciting attacks on paper trails:
But evidence is emerging to the effect that paper trails may not be of much help.
For instance, a study of the 2006 primaries in Ohio commissioned by Cuyahoga County, Ohio, showed that the results of that election could not be verified despite the presence of VVPAT.
Many former advocates of VVPAT, including John Gideon, executive director of VotersUnite, now favor requiring that all votes be recorded on paper ballots.
"DREs are unacceptable as voting devices and ... the addition of a VVPAT on a DRE is only a placebo to make some voters feel more comfortable," Gideon said in an e-mail.
Bob Dean |
Bob Dean
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Rcdean
Post Number: 8
Registered: 01-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, December 3, 2006 - 6:46 pm: |
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Bev Harris,
You have me wrong. I have no dog in the Holt Bill fight. It's an issue I have yet to learn about. My only interest is to assure that our nation's elections are free, fair, honest and accurate.
I've monitored BBV posts for a long time, and have followed the EV issue fairly closely.
In the Spring of '04, based partly on conversations I had at the time with you, I organized the successful effort to get the League of Women Voters to reverse their stance against VVPATs.
Somehow you construed from my thread-starter post above that not only was I reciting "canned talking points developed for an alliance of groups pushing the Holt Bill" but also that I was attacking civil rights. There follows an entire 20 paragraphs rebutting my supposed attack on civil rights.
I respectfully ask that you reread my original post. If you take it at face value, I'm sure you will see that we are on the same side.
You say I am wrong to imply that VVPATs are "good." I believe they are good when the alternative is naked DREs.
I am unalterably opposed to any jurisdiction anywhere in this country maintaining an election system that relies solely upon DREs with no VVPATs. Since that situation now exists, and since demanding the addition of VVPATs to these machines is the best we can hope for in most cases in the near term, I stand by my position that blanket vilification of VVPATs is unwise.
I reiterate that on a going forward basis, opti-scan systems seem to be the least worst solution at the present time, and therefore they are the solution we ought to support, rather than DREs even with VVPATs.
Bob Dean |
Bev Harris
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Site_admin
Post Number: 320
Registered: 10-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, December 3, 2006 - 7:15 pm: |
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Bob,
How do citizens have any opportunity to oversee their elections with either VVPAT or optical scan machines?
Answer: They don't, and neither do candidates.
There are implementations that would at least be an improvement, but right now, as elections are implemented currently, it really doesn't make much difference if there is a VVPAT or even an op-scam paper ballot.
If it can't be looked at in any meaningful way, what good is it, other than as a placebo?
By the way, Bob Dean, I get a lot of emails from Jim Dean with very similar talking points. But that is my mistake, because Jim Dean is Howard Dean's brother, if I'm not mistaken, and working with DFA. My brain connected dots that I don't think are connected. However, I have heard that line "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" from several different obsessively pro-Holt groups, some of whom were die hard paperless DRE proponents not too long ago.
I've re-read your post, but I encourage you to re-read mine. This is about fundamental civil rights, and a VVPAT does exactly nothing to protect them. |
Jo Anne Karasek
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Ajo_anne_karasek
Post Number: 3
Registered: 07-2006
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, December 3, 2006 - 9:49 pm: |
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Bob Dean: "It's not our job to protect public servants from their own embarrassment
Bev Harris: You are right that many public officials will be embarassed about their support of paperless DREs. No one I know wants to relieve them of their embarrassment.
They tromped on our civil rghts, wasted taxpayer money, and endangered the country. At the very least, an appropriate consequence should be acute embarrassment, if not removal from their right to act as our representatives. There is no reason citizens who were victimized by the poor judgement of their representatives should be obligated to help them along by making it less embarrassing for them."
My comment to Bob Dean: It's only a discussion draft, but the cat is out of the bag. The gist of the report titled "Requiring Software Independence in VVSG 2007: STS Recommendations for the TGDC", http://vote.nist.gov/DraftWhitePaperOnSIinVVSG2007-20061120.pdf
is that the DREs are unacceptable for determining vote count because with or without the "toilet paper roll" [paper trail], there is no independent way to count the votes separately from the software.
Although they project requiring independent verification separate from the DRE software in effect for 2009/2010, the cat is out of the bag NOW that it has been acknowledged by experts that DREs are hopelessly incapable of showing an accurate count. Duh!
And those who purchased DREs should have known that in the first place. In fact, it is my theory that they had to have known that and either didn't care or wanted it that way.
Therefore, it is inexcusable that DREs be used another minute, much less in the 2008 Presidential election! Whatever are you doing supporting DREs with a vendor software dependent paper trail!
If you supported optical scans that would be a big mistake, but halfway makes sense. Supporting DREs at this time makes you look like an a_s.
So as a taxpayer do you want to pay to replace DREs across the country right now with optical scans? Of course not. But the DREs have to go, so do what is best for the country (and the taxpayers), and support replacing them with a much cheaper secure hand counted paper ballots voting system. |
Tim Gooch
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Timthefoolman
Post Number: 39
Registered: 11-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, December 4, 2006 - 5:52 am: |
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"Although they project requiring independent verification separate from the DRE software in effect for 2009/2010, the cat is out of the bag NOW that it has been acknowledged by experts that DREs are hopelessly incapable of showing an accurate count. Duh!"
I believe what the report says (and most people who've looked at DRE's would agree), is that the design of any system that is responsible for checking itself, and does so through the same mechanism that it operates (i.e. storing votes in rewritable memory, and using the same code paths/processes to check that memory that were used to write it in the first place), is inherently flawed. The report does not suggest that the systems are "hopelessly incapable of showing an accurate count."
Accordingly, slapping a printer on a DRE, is not necessarily validating. I could, for example, create a system that monitored the input from the voter, wrote one thing to the printer, and wrote another to the storage. In that regard, a VVPAT is arguably worse than none at all, because it gives the user the impression of validation, when none has truly occurred. (Sort of like putting on a seat belt, without knowing if the other end is anchored to the chassis.)
Alternatively, if the voter's input marks a piece of paper (through any means, electronic or otherwise), and the marks on the paper are then recorded/counted through a separate process (again, electronic or otherwise, one can audit either part of the system independently. If the markings on the paper are a combination of machine readable and human readable marks (marksense-style optical scan ballots), then you have the ability to audit the process and make sure that marked ballots are counted correctly by the machine.
However, none of the current DRE's (apparently) use an intermediate medium that is externally verifiable, so the NIST report makes a logical case against being able to validate their behavior. That seems pretty straightforward.
As for embarrassing our public officials for their lack of savvy in choosing technology that they don't understand, one could make a similar case for the people who have so quickly put Internet-connected PCs in their homes, without understanding the implications of doing so. One of the reasons we have the problem with SPAM that we do, is that reliable estimates suggest that upwards of 75% of the home PCs on the Internet (a precentage that is most likely reflected in BBV members/readers) are hosting malware and viruses that allow SPAM and virus distributors to use these PCs in large "botnets."
Should we accordingly publicly humiliate everyone who has ignorantly put a home PC on the Internet, and allowed it to become infected with SPAM? Their actions hurt all of us, in ways that cost millions of dollars per year. Or, instead, should we do everything to educate users about the issues, and slow down on "flipping the bozo bit."
Most of us, put in the shoes of election officials, given the information presented to them, would have made similar decisions. If they made bad decisions, they need to acknowledge them, learn from them, and move forward. If they're unwilling to do so, then their actions will be embarrassment enough.
Tim
(Message edited by timthefoolman on December 04, 2006) |
Bob Fleischer
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Rjf7r
Post Number: 98
Registered: 09-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, December 4, 2006 - 8:04 am: |
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If I thought VVPATs were a "90 percent solution" -- or even an 80 percent solution -- to the problems inherent in DREs I'd support them and the Holt bill. But they are not. At best they allow an inherently dangerous mechanism -- the DRE -- to be "recounted". I'm not sure that that is even a 10 percent solution.
I used to support the Holt bill -- I no longer do.
Bob |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 3523
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, December 4, 2006 - 8:31 am: |
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Bob Fleischer:
quote:If I thought VVPATs were a "90 percent solution" -- or even an 80 percent solution -- to the problems inherent in DREs I'd support them and the Holt bill. But they are not. At best they allow an inherently dangerous mechanism -- the DRE -- to be "recounted". I'm not sure that that is even a 10 percent solution.
I used to support the Holt bill -- I no longer do.
Same here.
I think the Holt bill is like putting a paper muzzle on a hungry wild animal: it makes things worse for the public by giving the appearance of safety in the presence of danger. |
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