BBC: Concerns over US computer voting

Two leading American experts on computer voting have warned that the forthcoming US presidential election could be more chaotic than the last.

They told a Seattle conference that the new systems may be less reliable than those used four years ago.

The issue of voting systems came to the fore during the controversy over ballot papers in the crucial state of Florida. The question of what really counts as a vote - a clear hole in a ballot paper, or a bulge? - was hotly debated.

About 25% of the US electorate is expected to vote electronically in this year's November presidential election. This is up from around 15% in 2000.

" The problem with electronic voting is there is no independent way to check that the results are valid "
Professor David Dill

Following the fiasco in Florida, the Bush administration passed a bill called the Help America Vote Act, aimed in part at persuading states to switch to electronic voting.

But Professor David Dill from Stanford University told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science the switch may actually make things worse.

"The problem with electronic voting is your votes disappear into the electronic machine and there is no independent way to check that those results are valid," said Mr Dill.

"I know that I am not going to have a lot of confidence in the vote totals reported by those machines unless there is some independent polling or whatever that is consistent with that."

In recent years there has been a spate of disputes over local election results across the US involving voting machines.

There are many different models, and some provide the voter with no record of how he or she has voted - no evidence that the machine recorded the vote correctly.

Professor Ted Selker, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the meeting that the machines are not sufficiently secure.

He said there could and should be safeguards to prevent anyone tampering with their computer code before and after voting.

Data should be extracted from the machines after voting by someone other than the company which makes them, he continued.

Other countries, notably Brazil, he said, have introduced e-voting with appropriate safeguards and shown that it can work well.

The US needs to take similar steps, he said, if it wants to avoid chaos this time around.

I'll have to disagree with you that we need a major increase in absentee voting. I'll say that whether the vote is cast via the absentee voting system or on the day of the election the chance of the vote being tampered with is the same. On the day of the election they only have one day to tamper with the vote, with absentee voting they have several days to tamper with the vote.

On top of that I can't really trust the Democratic/liberal run post offices to deliver my vote if it is by mail, that's one of the reasons I'd like to see the post offices go private with maybe government oversight. Even if they did deliver it, how do I know some one won't throw it away in the middle of the night at the post office. And if it gets delivered how do I know it won't get thrown away at the place where they hold the absentee votes in the middle of the night by the person who holds the key to the box or whatever.

If I go to a early voting place how do I know it won't be tampered with if it's electronically cast or if it's a paper vote that the vote will disappear or come up missing.

On top of that, do they count the early voters after the main election results or with them. If after the main election results then I'd say it would be a waste of my vote unless it was a close and contested vote, and in my honest opinion is if it was a close and contested vote then the possibility of the election having been tamper with is greater and they the Democrats would do what ever they could to get rid of most or all of the early votes cause most of them I would imagine would come from conservatives that care and not liberals who don't care.

I say we need to have 24 hour camera's and video records on the places where they keep and do the vote and put them over the INTERNET. The video recorders need to have battery back ups too in case of power failures. Last but not least the problem with all this is it would cost money and if we are in a situation where we have to do all this to keep them from cheating then we are in big trouble. I do believe some day this cultural war is going to rear it's ugly head in some sort of civil war, or we will end up like the European socialists. Hopefully God will bless us with a turn around without any major civil war, and if not may the Christians and conservative win the battle in what ever sort it will be.

I've said allot and unfortunately I'm going to have to goto bed soon so I won't be able to respond to any responses. That's the hard knocks of life though.

Here is The Next subject for patriots and muckrakers...Computer Voting Fraud...

Please review the following webSites...

Black Box Voting.com - 'Ballot-Tampering in the 21st Century'

Excerpts:...
'Cathy Cox looks at a Diebold AccuVote TS machine and sees the future of voting.
Georgia's secretary of state gushes over its high-tech features,..
'Ginny Howard looks at the same machine and sees the mechanism that will undo democracy. Greedy corporations and power-hungry politicians will conspire to steal elections by manipulating results electronically, the retired math teacher from Smyrna believes...

'The researchers concluded the system is vulnerable to attacks that use software programs designed to discreetly activate themselves and change election results.
Also, Rubin said, blank smart cards could be bought and programmed by someone able to decipher the necessary computer language to make "homebrew" voter access cards. The privacy of the voting booth would allow someone to sneak in a stack of the homebrew cards and vote multiple times, he said...

For journalists: Here are links for source documents you may find helpful....From
Black Box Voting.org - The research and activism arm

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