November 4, 2006
What do the Experts Say About Electronic
Voting?
By Kathy Dopp
"Only real recounts (cross-checking paper
records against official tabulations), not just rereading machine totals,
will resolve close elections." October, 2006 The American Statistical
Association http://www.amstat.org/news/StatisticalIssuesInElections.pdf
"Computer
viruses ... can spread malicious software automatically and invisibly from
[Diebold] machine to machine during normal pre- and post-election
activity" and "even careful forensic examination of these records will
find nothing amiss" "anyone who has physical access to a voting machine or
to a memory card can install said malicious software in as little as one
minute." "some of these problems cannot be remedied without replacing the
machine's hardware." Princeton University Computer Scientist Ed Felton http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/
"Technicians
or election officials could be producing infected memory cards without any
knowledge of what they were doing." "We'll never have secure machines if
the vendors succeed in keeping the inner workings of their machines secret
from the security experts.... Secrecy is not the road to security." "The
Princeton report describes two attacks: a vote-altering attack and a
Denial-of-Service attack" Yale University Computer Scientist Dr. Michael
Fischer http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/article.php?id=6387
"The
current generation of electronic (DRE) voting machines are not secure, do
not provide voters with a way to know that their votes are being tabulated
correctly, and do not provide a mechanism for effective recounts when
errors arise. As such, they represent an unacceptable technical risk,
regardless of how people feel about them." Brigham Young University &
University of Utah Computer Scientists (Carter, Windley, Brundvand,
Gopalakrishnan, Hanscom, Jones, Lee, Regehr, Seamons, Shirley, Drake) http://utahcountvotes.org/voting_system_advice.pdf
"The
basic problem of e-voting can be understood without an in-depth knowledge
of computer technology. Here is a helpful analogy: Suppose voters dictated
their votes, privately and anonymously, to human scribes, and that the
voters were prevented from inspecting the work of the scribes. Few would
accept such a system, on simple common-sense grounds. Obviously, the
scribes could accidentally or intentionally mis-record the votes with no
consequences. Without accountability, a system is simply not trustworthy,
whether or not computers are involved. " and "You don't need a Ph.D. in
computer science to understand the basic problem with computerized voting.
Computer systems are so complex that no one really knows what goes on
inside them. We don't know how to find all the errors in a computer
system; we don't know how to make sure that a system is secure or that it
hasn't been corrupted (possibly even by its designers); and we don't know
how to ensure that the systems in use are running the software they are
supposed to be running." Stanford Computer Scientist David Dill http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article.php?id=5789
"Diebold's
system is utterly unsecured. The entire cyber-security community is
begging them to come back to reality and secure our nation's voting."
Pentagon Cyber-Security Advisor Stephen Spoonamore http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Technology/story?id=2596705&page=2
"We
conclude that this voting system [Diebold] is unsuitable for use in a
general election." Johns Hopkins University Professor of Computer Science
Avi Rubin in a paper presented at the 2004 IEEE Symposium on Security and
Privacy.
"There are no standards. There is no scientific research
... there's an erosion of voting rights implicit in the inability to trust
the technology that we use and if we were another country being analyzed
by America, we would conclude that this country is ripe for stealing
elections and for fraud." DeForest Soaries, Former US Election Assistance
Commission Chairman 2004-2006 (appointed by Bush)
"Many of the
hard drives and apparently all of the motherboards of the voting machines
are Made in China. China is known to be attacking the Dept of Defense,
Commerce Dept and other government computers. The motherboard controls the
computer and hiding a malicious program in the boot sector of a hard drive
isn't much of a trick, one has to assume that some or all of the Diebold
voting machines are potentially, even probably controlled by China
(Security 101)." And "Diebold is based on Microsoft Windows. No other
operating system in the world is as subject to so many viruses, Trojan
horses, hack tools, worms, or other attacks.." and "Diebold has repeatedly
used uncertified and untested software and hardware in elections, making a
mockery of even the weak certification and testing procedures in place."
And "Diebold has repeatedly failed to correct known security flaws and
software bugs." and "It has become easy to determine that a Diebold
representative is dissembling. His, or her lips are moving." Dr. Charles
Corry, Colorado Springs, CO, former IEEE (the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers) member of the voting system guidelines committee
for 4 years (& former Marine corporal) October, 2006
"Some
believe that computer touch screen machines are the future of electoral
systems, but the technology simply fails to pass the test of reliability.
As anyone who uses one can attest, computers break down, get viruses, lose
information, and corrupt data. We know this to be the case, and so we
back-up our files to ensure nothing important is lost. Paper ballots serve
as the ultimate back-up for our elections, providing secure and permanent
verification of the will of the people....When a vote is cast, a vote
should be counted. With paper ballots we will have a record. With paper
ballots the fundamental principle of one person, one vote is safe."
Democratic Governor Bill Richardson – NM http://utahcountvotes.org/US/GovRichardsonLtr20060301.pdf
Maryland
Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) called for the state to scrap its $106
million electronic voting apparatus and revert to a paper ballot system
for the November [2006] election. "When in doubt, go paper, go low-tech,"
he said. Ehrlich advocated leasing optical scan machines that use paper
ballots... Republican Governor Robert Ehrlich – MD Washington Post
Thursday, September 21, 2006 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/20/AR2006092001356.html
"All
three voting systems have significant security and reliability
vulnerabilities, which pose a real danger to the integrity of national,
state, and local elections." and "Few jurisdictions have implemented any
of the key countermeasures that could make the least difficult attacks
against voting systems much more difficult to execute successfully." The
Brennan Center (NYU Law School) Experts include statistical consultant,
professor University of California at Davis; Electronic Privacy
Information Center; professor Stanford University, PhD, Cyber Defense
Agency LLC; former CEO of F-Secure PLC; Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory and Chair of the California Secretary of State's Voting Systems
Technology Assessment and Advisory Board; prof. University of Iowa; PhD
NIST; PhD, NIST; prof. MIT; Former Chief Security Officer, Microsoft and
eBay; Counterpane Internet Security; PhD, formerly of the Computer
Science; Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT; prof. University of
California at Berkeley; prof. Rice University; Electronic Frontier
Foundation http://www.brennancenter.org/programs/downloads/SecurityExecSum7-3.pdf
"It
seems that integrity and honesty aren't terribly important at Diebold..."
and "We send people to death row on flimsier and more circumstantial
evidence..." "How much are you willing to pay for secure trustworthy
elections?" "What more would these machines have to do to prove they're
dangerous, whistle Dixie while they miscount our votes?" Andrew Kantor,
technology writer for USAToday, former editor PC Magazine and Internet
World. http://www.usatoday/tech/columnist/andrewkantor/2006-09-29-diebold_x.htm
Authors
Website: http://ElectionArchive.org
Authors Bio: Founder and
President of US Count Votes, dba The National Election Data Archive -
devoted to accurately counted elections since June 2004.
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