A Recurring Nightmare...

[kster]

Dated but, a damn good read...



ANNALS OF DEMOCRACY COUNTING VOTES

By Ronnie Dugger
The New Yorker, November 7, 1988


DURING the past quarter of a century, with hardly anyone noticing, the inner workings of democracy have been computerized. All our elections, from mayor to President, are counted locally, in about ten thousand five hundred political jurisdictions, and gradually, since 1964, different kinds of computer-based voting systems have been installed in town after town, city after city, county after county. This year, fifty-five per cent of all votes-seventy-five per cent in the largest jurisdictions-will be counted electronically. If ninety-five million Americans vote on Tuesday, November 8th, the decisions expressed by about fifty-two million of them will be tabulated according to rules that programmers and operators unknown to the public have fed into computers.


In many respects, this electronic conversion has seemed natural, even inevitable. Both of the old ways -- hand-counting paper ballots and relying on interlocked rotary counters to tabulate votes that are cast by pulling down levers on mechanical machines -- have been shown to be susceptible to error and fraud. On Election Night, computers can usually produce the final results faster than any other method of tabulation, and so enable local officials to please reporters on deadlines and to avoid the suspicions of fraud which long delays in counting can stimulate.


Recently, however, computerized vote-counting has engendered controversy. Do the quick-as-a-wink, computerized systems count accurately? Are they vulnerable to fraud, as well, even fraud of a much more dangerous, centralized kind? Is the most widely used computerized system, the Votomatic, which relies on computer punch-card ballots, disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of voters?


It appears that since 1980 errors and accidents have proliferated in computer-counted elections. Since 1984, the State of Illinois has tested local computerized systems by running many thousands of machine-punched mock ballots through them, rather than the few tens of test ballots that local election officials customarily use. As of the most recent tests this year, errors in the basic counting instructions in the computer programs had been found in almost a fifth of the examinations. These "tabulation-program errors" probably would not have been caught in the local jurisdictions. "I don't understand why nobody cares," Michael L. Harty, who was until recently the director of voting systems and standards for Illinois, told me last December in Springfield. "At one point, we had tabulation errors in twenty-eight per cent of the systems tested, and nobody cared."


Robert J. Naegele, who is the State of California's chief expert on certifying voting systems and is also the president of his own computer consulting firm, has been hired by the Federal Election Commission (F.E.C.) to write new voluntary national standards for computerized vote-counting equipment and programs. Last spring, in San Francisco, at a national conference of local-election officials, I asked Naegele whether computerized voting as it is now practiced in the United States is secure against fraud.

http://www.newsgarden.org/columns/dugger.shtml

[Warpy]

1. The GOP is very bad at stealing and not getting caught

probably because it's so arrogant and bloody minded. They erased 17,000+ votes in the 2004 general election but left those votes on the counters for judge races, telling us how many of us were robbed of our votes. New Mexico went to 100% paper Optiscan ballots. If a district is close, you can bet those will be hand recounted, something that will keep the Sequoia counters honest.

It took 9 days to count the Super Tuesday ballots here. Counting paper ballots is a slow process. It's also a process that is the most difficult to hack. Aside from box stuffing and box theft (something that was done in 2000 but discovered during the recount), there aren't that many ways to commit fraud.

[autorank]

2. K*R Amazing isn't it. How aobut this one too;)

http://www.itl.nist.gov/lab/specpubs/500-158.htm

Notational Institute of Science and Technology

1988

INSTITUTIONAL CONCERNS

6.1 The Continuing Problem Of Confidence In Results

Consultants' evaluations of a vote-tallying program, quoted in the New York Times article on July 29, 1985 <6>, as well as testimony on November 25, 1986 before a committee of the Texas legislature (section 2.8.3 above), have demonstrated that technically trained individuals continue to find significant vulnerabilities in vote-tallying software and hardware. Results of computerized elections continue to be challenged, and regardless of the outcomes of these challenges, it has been clearly shown that audit trails that document election results, as well as general practices to assure accuracy, integrity, and security, can be considerably improved.

Technically qualified consultants employed in some election challenges have stated that "it would be possible" to alter computer programs used in those situations. While proof of actual manipulation appears to be lacking, documentation conclusively demonstrating otherwise is insufficient, due to the manner in which the challenged elections, and others, have been conducted.

In the 1975 vote-tallying report, it was stated that:

The assurance that steps are being taken by election officials to prevent unauthorized computer program alteration or other computer-related manipulations remains, nationwide, a problem for the maintenance of public confidence in the election process. <91>

Thus, the 1975 statement remains pertinent.

Given the continuing problem, it is important, first, to identify the agencies responsible for correcting the deficiencies, and second, to provide recommendations that will assist these agencies in rectifying the situation.

6.2 Responsibility And Requirements For The Effective Management Of Elections

6.2.1 Government Responsibility

As discussed in section 3.9.1, responsibility for the conduct of elections in the United States rests with local governmental agencies assigned this function under State law (or under local law, under a grant of authority by State law). It was stated in that section that major elections are carried out by about 2870 county-level government agencies, and by some 7630 other local governmental agencies. In some 1005 of the total 3140 counties and county-equivalents, vote-tallying is completely computerized. It is partly computerized in an additional 192 counties.

Typically, the local offices operate with oversight by the chief State elections official, but the degree of oversight varies from State to State. The local offices of election administration require the necessary resources and expertise to efficiently and effectively carry out their responsibility. That responsibility includes procurement of supporting equipment and services, including vote-tallying systems. An effective procurement must include specifications (technical descriptions of products to be procured) so that accuracy, integrity, and security will be promoted.

[kster]

3. kick.nt