[ale] [OT] Voting Security

[Bob Toxen]

Yesterday the U.S. Military canceled the use of Internet Voting for the
November (general election).  They learned.

Now we need to get the Governor to cancel or alter the Windows "secure"
voting boxes for civilians.

Bob Toxen
bob at verysecurelinux.com               [Please use for email to me]
http://www.verysecurelinux.com        [Network&Linux/Unix security consulting]
http://www.realworldlinuxsecurity.com [My book:"Real World Linux Security 2/e"]
Quality Linux & UNIX security and SysAdmin & software consulting since 1990.

"Microsoft: Unsafe at any clock speed!"
   -- Bob Toxen 10/03/2002

On Thu, Feb 05, 2004 at 02:30:37PM -0500, aaron wrote:
> On Thursday 05 February 2004 22:01, ChangingLINKS.com wrote:
> > > "Internet voting presents far too many opportunities for hackers or even 
> > > terrorists to interfere with fair and accurate voting, potentially in ways 
> > > impossible to detect," the experts said in a statement Jan. 21. "Such 
> > > tampering could alter election results, particularly in close contests."
> > > 
> > > Seeing this simply stated in the mainstream media is good news,
> > > even if the military is being so stubbornly ignorant that they are still
> > > considering implementing some form of internet voting.
> > 
> > That's precisely why I posted it. Seeing it is a "good sign" for
> >  that reason, 
> > or it could be a "bad sign" that it will give voting systems a reason to "go 
> > back" to the way it was before (for years to come).
> 
> Judging from the research results, "going back" would be actually be a great 
> leap forward. 
> 
> Recent comprehensive, real world evaluations of voting systems 
> [ http://www.vote.caltech.edu/Reports/2001report.html ]
> show paper ballots with human tabulation can average an error rate of less 
> than 1%. Adding an electronic scanner system for tabulating paper ballots 
> kicks that rate up to about 1.5%. Punch card systems hover around 2.5% error 
> rates, a number which, coincidentally, is also the best case result for all 
> the currently deployed electronic and touch screen systems.
> 
> So, after our various bomb and bankrupt governments dump several billion of 
> our tax dollars into the pockets of a pack of technological corporate carpet 
> baggers, the absolute best system we will be able to hope for will be one 
> only slightly worse than what we already had, and that's only guaranteed in 
> the rare places where electronic systems are implemented with thorough 
> auditing and public tabulation.
> 
> Like I said before, we can hope that stories like this will wake more people 
> up to the serious fraud being perpetrated against them. Any electronic voting 
> system that lacks full auditing, public accounting,  open source code and 
> voter verified paper trails is demonstrably flawed will be highly susceptible 
> to both external tampering and internal corruption.
> 
> peace
> aaron
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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