http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20091105/OPINION01/311059977
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2009
The Jefferson County Board of Elections should be
congratulated for the successful debut of its new electronic voting machines.
Throughout the county, poll workers were well trained in
helping voters cast their ballots in the new system.
Actually, the process for individual voters was not too
difficult. Voters used pens to mark their choices on paper ballots which were
then fed into a machine that scanned and recorded the votes.
Pretty smooth. And the voting results in Jefferson County
were efficiently tabulated, recorded and posted.
The switch to electronic machines is in compliance with the
2002 Help America Vote Act, meant to make voting accessible for the disabled
and avoid the kinds of problems that developed during the 2000 presidential
race.
The process worked well in Jefferson County. Congratulations
to Republican Elections Commissioner Jerry O. Eaton and his Democratic
counterpart Sean M. Hennessey for a job well done.
COMMENTS
(1)
By A Concerned Voter
Thu., Nov. 05 at 10:09 pm
Madame,
You really are not connected with the reality of how
election computers work.
A TRULY Concerned Voter
(2)
By BevHarris Thu.,
Nov. 05 at 1:10 pm
Dear Editor:
Here is an opposing point of view regarding your recent
editorial stating that "the Jefferson County Board of Elections should be
congratulated for the successful debut of its new electronic voting
machines":
There can be only one lens through which we can evaluate
whether an election system is successful -- that of inalienable rights. The
nation’s historic distrust of secret tribunals and their inherent dangers to
freedom is no less when applied to our public elections.
At least, we would hope to see you publish the opposing
point of view. As pointed out by Andi Novick, an attorney with the Election
Transparency Coalition, New York is a state that has (mostly) still refused to
run elections using software, and legal challenges to software-driven election
systems in New York are pending. For good reason: Software by its nature hides the
processes by which it counts. New York has case law and statutory law in place
requiring that the steps in public elections be observable. Software based
systems can never satisfy the observability requirement.
An election is a public event and what transpires during the
election is public property. "It is essential to the maintenance of a
democratic society that the public business be performed in an open and public
manner and that the citizens of this state be fully aware of and able to observe
the performance of public officials."
Some people question the transparency argument since one
doesn't see one's vote counted when they pull the lever. Yet the lever
machine’s manner of operation is fully knowable, without need for special
expertise. By contrast, with software, neither the election officials nor the
observers can know how the computer functions since any rogue code can disguise
its tracks and force the machine to mimic normal behavior.
There would be no way to know that any of these attacks occurred;
the canvass procedure would not detect any anomalies, and would just produce
incorrect results.
Thus election officials and watchers are precluded from
performing those duties that would enable them to detect and prevent fraud and
have no basis to believe that the computer’s totals correspond to the votes
cast -- a violation of New York law. The public is precluded from being able to
control or observe its own public elections, a violation of the right to
liberty, by subjugating public right to know and public controls to those
insiders with custody of the software and hardware.
A vote-counting computer can be programmed to APPEAR to be
in working order when in fact it has been compromised. This is impossible with
lever machines. Worse, systematic exploits can be introduced spreading to all computers
in a county, compromising an entire state’s election results. This too is
impossible with lever machines.
Certification by the State cannot prevent these exploits or
cause computers to count votes in a transparent manner. Software can be
programmed to appear to be in working order for testing, when in fact it has
been compromised. Malicious coding will escape certification. As shown by the
Black Box Voting Hursti studies, the California UC Berkeley studies, the 2006
University of Connecticut study, and the state of Ohio EVEREST study,
software-driven systems can pass pre-election testing with malicious actions
appearing only on Election Night.
Bev Harris
Director - Black Box Voting
A national, nonpartisan, nonprofit elections watchdog
organization