[ale] Re: Vote Today - Message from Marie

[Michael D. Hirsch]

On Tuesday 05 November 2002 03:55 pm, Dow Hurst wrote:
> Just found out from my boss that yes, KSU CSIS Dept. was the
> architects of the system.  I know the chair, Merle King, and he is a
> dedicated honest person.  I have a lot of respect for him since he
> has treated me well here at KSU.  I'll ask and see if the code is
> available or could be made available.  I was quite surprised to hear
> about KSU's involvement since there is a lot of reputation on the
> line.

It's nice to know that someone did look at the code.  But I betcha they 
didn't look at the OS and GUI system code, only at the application 
code.  What if some rabid democrat was working at MS and inserted some 
nice obfucated code that said in essence "When there are some radio 
butons, 5% of the time give a click on any button with a text string 
containing 'Republican' to the button with a text string containing 
'Democrat'. "  How can we know this has not happened?  To have trusted 
electronic voting it is necessary, but not sufficient, to have open 
code.

--Michael

> Greg wrote:
> >I just voted and specifically looked for those items which came up
> > in previous posts.
> >
> >First, the second instruction says to "Touch the vote you want to
> > change to undo it and then vote again." or some such thing to that
> > effect.  Seems ok to me, but intuitiveness is in the eye of the
> > beholder.
> >
> >Second, the clerk at the door was not keen on the lack of paper
> > ballots.  I asked about recounts & was told that they would just
> > take the totals out of the machines again ... "just like the first
> > vote"  ... "yup".  "So a recount is somewhat impossible, huh ?" 
> > "yup"  After admitting that he was just a simple clerk, I was
> > jokingly advised to take it up w/ the State Secretary of State
> > (hehe, redundant, huh?).
> >
> >At this time a Field Coordinator (according to his ID - looked like
> > a MS drone to me) told me in reply to several of my concerns that
> > 1) they had batteries in the machines in case of power failure.  I
> > did not ask as to whether they were AAA or D batteries.  Hopefully
> > they were not the little CMOS batteries, though I have replaced
> > only one of this type in my entire life.  2) the vote is recorded
> > in three places, one including flash memory. OK, so any mistake is
> > now multiplied times 3.  I get it.  Redundancy = = accuracy  3) In
> > reply to my asking if I could see the code, I was told that the
> > code was audited by Kennesaw State University to comply with
> > Federal and State specs.  I am hoping that the KSU folks that
> > reviewed the code were code knowledgeable in some if not many
> > respects and instead were not the Political Science Dept. folks. 
> > Mr. Field Coordinator did not answer the question, but what can you
> > expect in dealing with anything touching politics ?? (ok, I'll say
> > it "or M$").
> >
> >At this time I left before asking any further questions, since my
> > doctor told me my blood pressure is starting to get problematic (&
> > I a wee lad of 39).  I left feeling as if this was an expensive
> > piece of crap system w/ no redundant and independent check on it. 
> > I would rather have the cards and a chad problem if it came to
> > that.
> >
> >As to another point in a post; so why not ask to see the code ? 
> > Sounds like a worthwhile project to me.  I mean, did not taxpayer
> > money fund this ?  I wouldn't buy a house or car without looking it
> > over and software should not be any different.
> >
> >If there is a tight race with plenty of discord, I am sure that all
> > of the concerns & issues expressed on this forum will move to
> > center stage in the media.  On one hand I wouldn't mind seeing the
> > idiots who hoisted this on us get roasted in the national media,
> > but on the other hand I would hate being tarred with the same brush
> > just because I live in GA.  The SAT jokes are bad enough.
> >
> >
> >Greg Canter
> >
> >>-----Original Message-----
> >>From: Joseph A Knapka [mailto:jknapka at earthlink.net]
> >>Sent: Tuesday, November 05, 2002 1:32 PM
> >>To: Irv Mullins
> >>Cc: ale at ale.org
> >>Subject: Re: [ale] Re: Vote Today - Message from Marie
> >>
> >>Irv Mullins wrote:
> >>>On Tuesday 05 November 2002 11:35 am,  Matt wrote:
> >>>>As soon as whatever you vote with/on is removed from your view,
> >>>> there is ALWAYS the potential for corruption to occur.  Why not
> >>>> just
> >>
> >>have a little
> >>
> >>>>faith in the process that's being used and get on with your
> >>
> >>lives.  If you
> >>
> >>>>feel the process is so flawed, don't use it.  Make them work a
> >>>> little harder by having to actually fabricate votes rather than
> >>>> just changing yours.
> >>>
> >>>There always has been, and will continue to be, vote fraud.
> >>
> >>Not necessarily. In "Applied Cryptography", Bruce Schneier outlines
> >>cryptographically secure protocols that prohibit votes from being
> >>changed by anyone other than the caster, prohibit ballot-stuffing,
> >>ensure that every vote is properly counted exactly once, and
> >> possess a number of other useful properties. With such an
> >> implementation, it would be impossible for even the programmer who
> >> writes the code to alter election results, since any voter can
> >> execute a cryptographic challenge against the results to ensure
> >> that their vote is correctly counted, and no one without an
> >> unreasonably huge amount of computing power would be able to alter
> >> the results without being detected.
> >>
> >>If we're gonna use electronic voting, we ought to do it right.
> >>
> >>-- Joe
> >>
> >>
> >>---
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> >
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