Voting security
Was the 2002 Georgia election, where Republicans defied pre-election
polling to upset the Democratic governor and senator, a dry run for
the theft of the 2004 election?
See
the London Independent's report, "All the President's votes."
Then see Wired.com's
report, "Did E-Vote Firm Patch Election?" on claim that Diebold
Election Systems installed unauthorized software "patches" on Georgia
election machines.
California becomes the first state to require
e-votes to leave a paper trail. Also see See Machine
Politics for Wired.com reports on the controversy over the use of
electronic voting machines.
See VerifiedVoting.org,
a campaign initiated by David Dill, professor of computer science and
electrical engineering at Stanford University, to demand a
voter-verifiable audit trail.
The Business of E-Voting, by
Jason Leopold, from the 10/1/03 TPP.
Black Box Voting, online
edition of electronic voting critic Bev Harris's book on ballot
tampering in the 21st century, with other resources on voting
security. Parts of the website are blocked by Diebold, which claimed
violations of copyright law because the website is linked to other
websites that contain memos detailing security problems with Diebold
machines. A companion website, BlackBoxVoting.org, is completely shut
down. (See
Diebold Machines and Your Vote, Part 2.)
Diebold
Machines and Your Vote, Part 1, outlines the susceptibility of
electronic voting machines to tampering and election fraud.
Part
2 details the Diebold case timeline and the legal battles that
ensued as a) the Diebold system becomes available to outside
scrutiny, b) the Diebold system is revealed to be susceptible to
election tampering, c) computer scientists demonstrate many critical
vulnerabilities, d) Diebold CEO promises to deliver electoral votes
to Bush in 2004, e) evidence that Diebold illegally tabulated votes
before polls closed, and b) Diebold responds with legal action to
silence critics.
A Very
American Coup, articles on electronic voting.
Hacking the vote, How
to stop someone from stealing the 2004 election, by Paul Boutin at
Slate.com.
Voting
Machine Controversy, a report on the head of Diebold Inc., one of
the top electronic voting machine suppliers in the US, telling
Republicans in a fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping
Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
Nightmare
Scenario is Here, by Lynn Landes, on the problems of computerized
voting with no paper trail.
Lynn
Landes' writings on electronic voting, with links to other
reports on the potential for mischief in computerized voting.
Analysis of Voting
Security by the Johns
Hopkins University Information Security Institute, which
identified numerous security flaws in the Diebold electronic voting
machines used in Virginia, Georgia, California, Kansas and other
states.
Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., filed Voter
Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003 (H.R. 2239) to
require, among other things, a voter-verified paper record of each
ballot cast.
Greg Palast of the BBC and the British Guardian on the
Theft
of the Presidency in 2000.
Resources on Electronic
Voting by Rebecca Mercuri, a professor of Computer Science at
Bryn Mawr College, Pa., an expert on electronic voting systems.
Resources on Voting
Technology by the California Voter Foundation, a nonprofit,
nonpartisan organization dedicated to promoting and applying the
responsible use of technology to improve the democratic process.
Reports on a Cal Tech-MIT study
of the 2000 election, which analyzed "residual votes" --
"uncounted, unmarked and spoiled ballots" -- and found that for the
2000 presidential race, 2.5% of all votes cast on punch-card machines
were residual votes compared with 2.3% for touch-screen machines. But
in gubernatorial and senatorial races, punch-card machines had a 4.7%
error rate, while touch-screen machines had an alarming 5.9% error.
The least problems were recorded with optical scan and paper
ballots.
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