the overview/cover statement mention the importance of electronic voting as a primary means of fraud, nor is there any hint that it might have occurred in 2004. The report is all done in a very hypothetical, descriptive approach. Electronic fraud possibilities are not covered until Section VII of the report (
"Electronic Voting: Accuracy, Accessibility and Fraud." That section looks good to me (though we definitely need to have Andy Stephenson and other experts give their opinion), but its contents and recommendations are NOT mentioned by Dean, who focusses instead on the long lines and voter suppression. Yes, these issues are very important, but without all-out attack on the electronic voting fraud mechanics, there is NO HOPE OF IMPROVEMENT. The GOP could just "compromise" by letting the black districts have more machines but still hack the vote count. Presto, another stolen election.
Electronic voting fraud is covered (and not until Section VII) only as a hypothetical list of described weaknesses and proposed corrections. Do they really think they can push all these through without a stronger basis in the fact that there WAS massive abuse and fraud in 2004? If the public doesn't know, who will push the GOP to change? Especially since without fraud, many of them would be thrown out in the next election and they would lose their congressional monopoly. In my opinion, there is far too much gentility, "looking forward," as the report says, and NO mention of the massive evidence that fraud did occur in 2004. All the descriptions are only polite and hypothetical. How do they expect to make any changes with that attitude and starting point?
Here is the pdf file of Section VII:
http://a9.g.akamai.net/7/9/8082/v001/www.democrats.org/pdfs/ohvrireport/section07.pdfIt is only 9 pages long, including cover page and white space. The recommendations in Section VII are on its last two pages. The bolded/underlined section is in italics in the text of the report:
Recommendations
- Precinct-based optical scan systems are the most "accurate" voting systems available today. They are also reasonably priced and can satisfy HAVA requirements in a cost-effective manner with devices such as the ES&S A(see Figure 3).
- Current DRE systems are not engineered to meet the needs of elections. They are extremely expensive to procure and maintain. They are not sufficiently robust against fraud. They are less usable to the broad population of voters than earlier, simpler technologies.
- Existing standards and practices for the certification of voting systems are insufficient to the security requirements of DRE systems. Significant effort will be needed to create the next generation of standards.
- Few quantitative studies have been performed on the usability of different voting technologies. Vendor claims of improved usability should not be considered meaningful until they perform significant user studies under controlled conditions. Existing anecdotal evidence, including event reports, are at best mixed in their opinions of different voting systems’ usability. Election official should perform controlled, scientific studies of their own populations using their own voting machines to truly understand where they might be experiencing usability problems.
- Most voting system vendors consider their software to be proprietary trade secrets and generally resist any attempts to disclose and discuss their designs in public.
Private, vendor trade secrets have no place in public elections. Vendors are welcome to protect their intellectual property with copyrights and patents, but their full designs must be subject to public scrutiny. As elections become increasingly electronic, such scrutiny is critical to maintaining transparency and public confidence in elections.
- Computer software, at every stage in the process, might be buggy and could well be malicious. Different strategies are necessary to mitigate against this threat, depending on what voting system is used.
- Paperless DRE voting systems generally print precinct-level tallies at the end of the election. These printouts are generally signed by the election officials working in the precinct. Those signed printouts should be treated as important evidence as to the result of the election and should be preserved for recounts and post-election auditing.
- Precinct-level optical scanners might incorrectly tally votes as well. The original marked ballots should be independently counted, or at least randomly sampled and compared to the electronic results, before an election result is certified.
- Paperless DRE systems should be upgraded to voter-verified paper trail systems. The printouts should be treated in exactly the same fashion as optical scan ballots: they should be carefully preserved as evidence of voter intent and should be randomly sampled and compared to the electronic results.
- “Parallel testing,” where some DRE voting systems are pulled out of general use and are tested, on election day but under controlled conditions, is an pragmatic and valuable test that should be performed whenever such voting machines are being used.
- The computers used to tabulate election results are a tempting target for election fraud, and as such, require more significant controls, including well-chosen passwords and physical access restrictions. They should never, in their entire lifetime, be connected to the Internet or to any modem or communication device. Instead, an “air gap” style of security should be used. Data can be released to the public through simple measures such as burning a CD with election results and hand-carrying such a CD to a separate, network-enabled computer.
- Election officials need to hire “penetration testing” (also called “tiger team”) consultants to examine the security of their election systems. Where such teams have been hired in the past, significant vulnerabilities have been discovered. Such teams should be hired on a recurring basis to audit voting machines as well as the entire voting process, from registration through tabulation.
- The timely publication of detailed precinct-level election statistics is critical to the public confidence in an election result, and such data is often not available in its entirety for every county. Such statistics can be easily derived from local voting tabulation systems and should be quickly and electronically reported in a standardized fashion.
Sounds good, but I haven't heard Dean say a word about it. Like Kerry, he is only talking about those long lines. Unless this emphasis expands to include an aggressive, all-out campaign to prevent electronic fraud, we are lost.
We need to hammer the Dems and also the Repubs to support fundamental electronic voting reform. We cannot let up. So far, they are not even talking about it enough. They keep talking about those long voter lines but never about the electronic fraud.I think this is because nation-wide electronic fraud stole the last election, and they are all working at NOT admitting that. Well, unless the Dems admit how bad the situation really is, how massive the numbers of incidents and how extensive the fraud, I can't see how they can make the changes required to prevent it from happening again. It's in the GOP's interest in every way to see to it that their monopoly is kept intact by more fraud. They've taken YEARS to build this fraud machine, and they are NOT going to give it up without a knock-down fight. I believe this can only be accomplished if the public is made aware that the last election was stolen. I believe that only national outrage will fuel change.
Otherwise, nothing will prevent future fraud and our democracy is not only gone - it is already - but will never return. I cannot understand why the Dems don't seem to worry more about that.
My cynical side says that most people in this country don't know about the existence, let alone the magnitude, of the election fraud that stole the 2004 election. Many of them HAVE, however, heard something about those long voting lines. This is especially true in the communities that were affected by those lines. I am hoping that talking about the long lines but not the electronic fraud isn't just a ploy for more votes from the people angered by the long lines.
The unfair voting conditions must be addressed, but unless the electronic voting fraud is also fully and very aggressively addressed, there will be no return of democracy to this country.
ed:typo
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