http://www.dailyfreeman.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19007227&BRD=1769&PAG=461&dept_id=82701&rfi=6
DailyFreeman.com
Editorials
11/13/2007
The Election Night fiasco at the Ulster County Board of
Elections certainly is food for thought.
When election returns disappear for a half a day into the
digital maw of electronic processing, there is a break in the chain of custody
that does nothing good for public confidence that the election was on the up
and up.
We don't mean to say that the results of this election in
Ulster County were ever in danger of evaporating or being either accidentally
or maliciously rearranged. After all, at the front end of the election, the
ancient and much-maligned lever voting machines presumably had created a verifiable
record that could have been reconstituted into new returns at the central
office.
But the vagaries of electronic compilation certainly make
you think about all of the other things that can go wrong if the reach of
digital technology is spread deeper into the electoral process.
Moreover, when only experts can tell you what has happened,
a system intended to serve and be transparent to the general public loses that
transparency. Indeed, like last Tuesday night's election returns, it simply
disappears.
There are a lot of things in modern life that we have to
take on faith, such is the complexity of our social organization and our
technology.
But democracy shouldn't be one of them.
It's now been seven years since the disastrous 2000
presidential election in Florida forced the nation to take a look at how it
casts and counts ballots. In those seven years, this state's elections
commissioners have yet to find a way to meet new federal standards for
protecting the franchise, while every other state in the union has.
Seven years! You'd think the Empire State was a backwater.
The state that once was a leader in innovation now can't get
out of its own way.
That would be unbelievable if we weren't already painfully
well-acquainted with the various dysfunctions of New York state government.
So, now, the federal government has taken the state to
court, asking a federal judge to force the state to adopt a plan that would put
new machines in place by September 2008.
But part of the reason for the delay in certification of
newer technologies is the vulnerability of each to malfunction, if not
downright tampering.
Over the summer, computer scientists from California
universities demonstrated the ability to hack into the electronic voting
systems of three of the four largest vendors in the business of developing
voting machines. Not only that, but the scientists found way in which vote
totals might be altered.
Yikes!
You really don't want a system in which the local Democratic
Party chairman throws up his hands and declares, "What the hell am I going
to do? I don't know how these things work."
That happened last week in Ulster County.
Actually, you don't want even the average voter to be saying
something like that.
The verifiability of voting results should be as certain as
an "X" on a piece of paper. From the time a voter steps into the
polling place, the trail of that person's vote should be transparently
verifiable and secure.
That means a clear chain of custody of every vote cast by
every voter. Which means being able to see that it has been secured from the
moment it is cast until the moment it is counted - and beyond. Probably meaning
an indelible paper trail that average people, with a modestly functioning pair
of eyes, can follow.
The whole thing has given us a certain Luddite state of mind
about voting reform. Paper ballots, anyone?
©Daily Freeman 2007
COMMENTS
Added: Saturday November 17, 2007 at 07:49 AM EST
It's not government by the computer vendors, for the
computer vendors, of the computers
Finally people are waking up to, as you aptly describe-
digital democracy. Thank you for this piece and your observations. Too few
people, particularly in NY where we have not yet been subjected to secret vote
counting by defective and corruptible computers, understand and even fewer
within the government have a clue. And yet the evidence is all there. Across the
country since the Orwellian-Help America Vote Act (HAVA) 48 states have
purchased computers (touch-scree DREs and PBOSs) which can't do that which
they're intended to do: count votes accurately. They are shoddily made, fail
repeatedly, flip votes, add votes not counted, delete votes counted, and as the
Secretary of State of California found- are all vulnerable to hacking in less
than a minute. These theft-enabling computers stand in the way of the people's
right to vote.
And yet like sheep being led to the slaughter those in a
position to stop it (the State Board of Elections, our legislators, the
Governor's office, the Attorney General) accept with resignation that the
vendors have won control over our elections. Except in Ulster County perhaps
which is actually taking the lead and waking up before the rest of the state.
Hopefully not too late.
It's really quite simple- people need to retain control over
the process and counting of their elections or elections are just a sham
process of appearing to validate the consent of the governed. Part of the
'right to vote' includes the right to know that your vote was counted. There is
no way to know what a computer does with your vote. This is made even worse by
the fact that these computers are owned by a private vendor that insists on the
right to conceal how the computer is programmed to count the vote. That's
secret vote counting in the United States of America and our state legislature
laid down for the corporate interest in secrecy over the people's right to know.
Not just NY- the entire country, except Oklahoma.
We still have time to raise our voices and resist the
privatization and take over of our elections in NY, the last state in the Union
to have succumbed. I encourage everyone to write and call and show up. If you
email me at andinovick@aol.com I will send you all the links for how to do
this.
Last week I appeared at the State Board of Elections'
regular meeting to be heard, which is typically not permitted. I was permitted
this time, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3bPKEhgIFU for video
The Department of Justice has recently moved in federal court
to say to NY- you know all the computerized voting systems the other states
have gotten suckered with? You know the ones that have repeatedly been shown to
break down, mistabulate and otherwise steal your vote. The ones that an 8th
grader can hack. The ones that were decertified in California. The ones that
cannot possibly securely produce an accurate tally and instead will be sure to
disenfranchise you. Go buy them for the 2008 election. What do you expect? The
feds need to gain control over NY what with the Clinton Guiliani monster
looming. This is what I said on the video if you don't want to watch but would
rather read:
On behalf of the people, who you're supposed to represent:
We don't want the SBOE caving into the DOJ pressure and
authorizing the purchase of these theft-enabling, failed machines which the
DOJ's memo of law says are good enough for them and for HAVA-compliance.
We want our votes counted- not stolen.
The machines the DOJ is telling you to purchase have already
been found by the SOS of California and many other independent investigations
(cites to the studies contained in the hand out attached here) to be capable of
being hacked in less than a minute. These machines count our votes using secret
software so the people can never know whether their votes were counted as cast.
Secret Vote Counting by the corporations or the Government *: doesn't get
anymore un-American than that!
You can’t certify machines in time for 2008 because there
are no machines on the market that aren’t capable of being rigged without
detection. And there are no machines that don’t count our votes in secret. And
if you do nothing, the DOJ has threatened to impose its will on our state
sovereignty.
But there is one way we can get the DOJ off our backs. We
can have HAVA-compliant elections for 2008 and not get stuck with these failed
voting systems that should have been recalled for their utter failure to
provide a means to conduct honest elections: You can start now instituting
chain of custody polling place protocol for citizens to cast their votes on
paper by their own hand, and count them, with their own eyes. Citizens who need
assistance may use ballot markers to create paper ballots to be manually
counted with the rest of the ballots. MANUALLY COUNTED PAPER BALLOTS IS THE
ONLY SOLUTION THAT COMPLIES WITH HAVA, CAN BE DONE IN TIME FOR 2008 AND TRULY
PROTECTS THE INTERGRITY OF OUR ELECTIONS.
* Across the country private voting vendors assert
proprietary rights to conceal the means by which they program and count the
votes on their computers (otherwise known as corporations counting our votes in
secret) which most states submissively accept. New York requires that the
proprietary source coding be placed in escrow so that a few members of the
government be permitted to inspect it. Those who look on behalf of the
government do so pursuant to non-disclosure rules that prohibit any member of
the public from ever knowing how the votes are counted-- or not counted
(otherwise known as corporations with government counting our votes in secret).
It's time for the people to be heard.
Thanks
Andrea Novick, Esq.
Rhinebeck, NY
Coordinator Election Defense Alliance,
Co-Founder Northeast Citizens for Responsible Media
Andi Novick, Rhinebeck, NY
Added: Tuesday November 13, 2007 at 07:22 PM EST
Get a new chairman! Or Two! Or ALL! Are you kidding?
Paul Pond, Mt. Marion, NY