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  • From: Rowland Smith <rowland AT nc.rr.com>
  • To: "Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/" <internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] Stop Computer Voting In North Carolina
  • Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2004 01:02:19 -0500



Rowland Smith wrote:


Paul Smith wrote:


On Mar 12, 2004, at 10:03 AM, H. Wade Minter wrote:

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On Thu, 11 Mar 2004, Thomas Beckett wrote:

Rachel Cox wrote:

Yeah, I'm not very excited about electronic voting at this point
myself. I'm eager for the time when I can be, but right now there are
just too many questions for me to be comfortable with it.



Well in North Carolina at least, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. The
paper ballot and optical reader system we now use (in Orange, Durham and
Wake at least) works great, and there's a physical ballot and audit
trail. The ballot itself is simple and easy to understand. I have even
witnessed a local election recount on behalf of the Democratic Party and
I think the system works well. I would be extremely suspicious of any
effort to replace this system with anything else.



The big problem as I see it is that the big voting companies like Diebold
are absolutely opposed to, and fighting tooth-and-nail to stop, any sort
of audit trail for their computers. They want zero paper trail for their
voting.

Why on earth would anyone who wants fair elections be so opposed to having
a paper audit trail? That's what gets my suspicions up about e-voting.
They want to take an unproven system and remove any sort of non-electronic
accountability.

Sketchy at best.

- --Wade





To further a very good point, I'll add that I believe that a voting system, electronic or otherwise, should not rely on anything that is secret or proprietary at all. I can certainly respect Diebold's need to protect their IP and internal processes from competitors, but the fact of the matter is that the need for transparency in the voting process far outweighs Diebold's business concerns. The internal workings, software code, accounting systems, equipment inventory and history, audits, reviews, records... all that stuff ought to be right out in the open and subject to public and official scrutiny.
Maybe it's just me, but I wish our leaders were as vigilant about fair and transparent elections as they seem to be about juiced-up overpaid baseball players having an unfair advantage over non-juiced-up overpaid baseball players.


I agree that any e-voting system should be both open-source and free, and should be designed to run on off-the-shelf hardware/os. E-Voting is too important to be left up to commercial, proprietary, closed-source systems. I don't believe that the evolution of our voting system shouldn't be left up to private companies with ties to political parties.

Here are a few links of interest:

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/000330.html

http://verifiedvoting.org/

http://open-vote.org/


Rowland


I was having trouble sleeping tonite - my tin-foil-hat keeps making crinkly sounds when I roll over in bed, so I started thinking about e-voting, visions of e-voting sheep jumping a logic-gate swimming in my head...

Has anyone on the list discussing e-voting brought up the topic of TEMPEST? I did some googling and found a few newsgroup posts that discuss the tempest problem in relation to e-voting, but I don't recall seeing this discussed in any of the articles on e-voting that have appeared in the past few months in the mainstream media.

What is TEMPEST you ask?

(http://www.electronicdefinitions.com/definition.php?defid=2076)

---
"Try to use a radio near a computer and the chances are you`ll hear strange buzzing humming and crackling noises. This is because every computer is also an unintentional radio transmitter and the funny noises are caused by the emissions known as "Tempest" radiation emawting from its cicuitry and in particular its screen.

Govermnent spooks have known since the Sixties that with the right equipment these faint signals can be picked up. If for example you have a sensitive document displayed on your computer spies lurking in the next roomcould intercept the radiation from the cathoderay tube in your monitor and reconstruct the onscreen image. They would then be able to read the document almost as easily as if they were looking over your shoulder.

As a result govemment agencies use specially shielded computers monitors and modems to block the emission of compromising radiation. In some cases whole rooms or even entire buildings are shielded. It`s an expensive business: shielded computers cost several times as much as unshielded ones and the US Department of Defence is thought to spend $1.5 bilhon a year on shielded equipment and testing. And technical information about Tempest originally the code name of a classified American research project has always been classified."
---

This poses a problem for e-voting. It is possible for a third party to monitor the unshielded touch-screens in a voting place. With the help of a second party inside the voting place, a correlation can be made between a particular vote that was cast on a particular voting machine, and the voter that cast the vote. This (just like a human-readable printout that could be carried out of the voting place) allows a voter to prove to an entity that he/she voted for a particular candidate - allowing voters to sell their votes

Requiring TEMPEST hardened e-voting machines would probably stop e-voting dead in the water due to the high cost.

Rowland


--P

--
Paul Smith
Foundry Zero
919.834.5433
www.foundryzero.com

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