[EM] Why We Shouldn't Count Votes with Machines

[Kathy Dopp]

> Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2008 02:01:45 -0400
> From: Dave Ketchum <davek at clarityconnect.com>
> Subject: Re: [EM] Why We Shouldn't Count Votes with Machines

>> Well here is where you and I differ.  I think if electoral fraud in the
>> US were eliminated, it would be a good thing, but not dramatically
>> change things, any more than eliminating shoplifting would dramatically
>> change our economy.  I do not believe that such fraud changes the
>> outcome of a large percentage of elections, and in those it does, it was
>> pretty close anyway.

And how do you know this since elections are not subjected to
independent audits except in one state (beginning in 2006 - NM)?  Do
you believe that you are psychic and *know* which elections are being
subjected to fraud in the last couple of decades since ballots have
been primarily secretly counted by private companies with easily
hackable, unaccountable voting equipment.

>
> Most elections do not inspire the fraudsters.  The few they care about
> may be near ties, responding to minimum fraudulent effort.


What basis in fact could you possibly have to support such a belief?

>>
>> If plurality voting were replaced with a ranked system such as a
>> condorcet method, I beleive it WOULD dramatically change the entire
>> dynamic of politics, in a very, very good way, by nearly eliminating the
>> polarized nature of government due to partisanship.

Really? Even if it is counted inaccurately and the new condorcet
method does not accurately determine who wins, because anyone who has
inside access can manipulate the system to put anyone in office they
want to?

So we do not care about having accurately counted elections on this
list, as long as we have the "appearance" that a new voting method is
being used to select the winners?

>>
>> So my priorities are different.

Yes. Apparently.

>>
>> Giving up on fixing a huge problem because it makes it more difficult to
>> fix a much smaller problem is not something I can support.

Ah. So you consider it a "small" problem that the public has virtually
no reason to believe that election results are accurate in 49 out of
50 states and that even the one state that subjects their election
results to independent scrutiny, does so in a wholly unscientific
manner that is insufficient to detect vote fraud in close election
contests?

And just why, pray tell, do you believe that the fact that elections
is the only major industry (I am aware of) that is not subjected to
any independent auditing, yet election winners decide who controls
budgets in the millions to trillions of dollars and make decisions on
awarding contracts worth millions to billions of dollars, is such a
"small" problem?


>>
>> (and btw, I believe this list is about reforming the voting methods, not
>> so much about fixing security problems.....so if you are willing to
>> abandon all attempts at reform because you don't think you can solve
>> your particular problem as easily on a reformed system, it seems
>> unlikely to fly here)

Oh. So it is *not* "reform" to subject elections to independent
routine scrutiny to ensure accurate election outcomes for the first
time in US history?  You certainly do have a very narrow definition of
"reform".

In your dictionary, what exactly does the word "reform" apply to?  (I
am certainly down the rabbit hole again judging from this conversation
where you claim to know which election outcomes were and were not
fraudulently altered when you can have no possible data to make such a
claim.)

>>
>> The whole point of open source is that if the "officials" don't verify
>> it satisfactorily, someone will.  A security researcher could make
>> themselves famous for discovering something malicious in voting software.

Really and how pray tell would they do this - especially when today's
voting systems have so many back doors to simply change the votes in
30 secs to a minute without altering any software and without even
touching the writable log files which could be altered with the votes
anyway?  Are you counting on the same kind of miracles that let you
know how many prior election contests were rigged without any access
to the data to know that?

>>
>> The only thing that is immune to checking would be the compiler itself,
>> since the compiler needs a compiler to compile itself....but someone
>> would have had to have done something evil (and very, very brilliant) a
>> long time ago to pull that off....good for a sci fi novel anyway, but
>> not so much in the real world.

Really?  So not the proprietary compiled video drivers or any of the
other proprietary hardware or software and of course I see you ruled
out all the back doors that simply allow persons to change the
reported vote counts on the central tabulators?

I wonder why your opinion differs so wildly from all the computer
scientists who are known to have studied voting systems for almost a
decade now and why you think you know so much more than they do?  Are
you an all-seeing being?

And of course since you consider yourself to be such an expert, you
must already know that it takes at least eight years to develop, test,
certify, and bring to market any new voting system (thanks to the
idiotic federal certification process, and the long buying cycles),
and first you would have to convince all the ignorant election
officials who believe in the concept of security by obscurity (having
been duped by the voting vendors for decades) and also convince the
voting vendors to spend the million dollars or so to bring such a
voting system to market. Do you have an investor willing to do that
since you consider it to be such a "small" problem?

And of course you have not given one fact yet to rebut these facts,
which show that creating an open source voting system would only be
one tiny part of assuring accurate vote counts, so do you have a plan
for convincing all the election officials to more than double the cost
of elections in order to do post-election or parallel software
verfication, and set up the systems to be able to do that?  And of
course you must convince the public that they do not need to be able
to transparently verify that vote counts are correct, and that they
should either learn computer programming or trust some technicians if
they want to be able to verify the accuracy of election outcomes. Do
you have a plan for convincing the public to go along with your
solution which as of right now 92% of the public would oppose,
according to a recent Zogby poll?


>>     Huh?  Try doing that yourself. I do not know if the summary *screen*
>>     version of the ballot appears at the same time as you get a chance to
>>     check the paper version of the ballot. I don't think that is
>>     necessarily an option you would have.
>>
>>
>> What is so hard about that?

So you think that it is easy to obtain the funding and spend the next
6 to ten years to develop and bring to market and sell to the public
and to hopelessly incompetent (and arrogant) election officials a new
voting system that currently 92% of the public would oppose (unless
you plan on using voter created paper ballots and optical scan
machines)?

OK Then. Why don't you take care of such a "small" problem for the
rest of us who've been struggling for five years to convince election
officials and voting machine vendors to do more competent work?

> The point is, if the UI is designed
>> reasonably well, a large percentage of voters will *know* if the machine
>> is cheating.

OH. I SEE. Now you are going to change all humans as well so that they
can proofread accurately whereas only 30% of voters can accurately
proofread ANYTHING accurate currently!

What is your plan for that?  And just what is your evidence that all
the prior research on the editing capacities of most people can be
quickly overcome by your own plan?

(I am certain I am down the rabbit hole.)

>>
>>     If you followed the voting news nationwide like I do, you would know
>>     that people have been talking about it a lot since the November 2004
>>     presidential election, in particular there was lots of vote switching
>>     reported in Ohio.
>>
>>
>> Yes but this is different.  This is like going to the store, and having
>> one thing on the cash register and another on the credit card receipt.

OH REALLY?  Now having many voters report that seeing the candidate
they selected be switched to a different candidate right before their
eyes on DRE touchscreen voting machines in CA, FL, OH, and many other
states is analogous to having a cash register and credit card receipt
differ. HOW EXACTLY?

You seem very sure that you know much more about this field (of
election results accuracy) than everyone who has studied it for many
years.  Could you please back up any of your claims with any evidence
or data or are we hopelessly down the rabbit hole still?

>> A store might get away with that for a day or two, but people will catch
>> on quickly, and suddenly word will get out that the store is cheating
>> people, and a larger percentage of people will check, etc.

Really, so reality is the opposite of reality?

Well, I suppose you are correct, in that MD, FL, TN, NM, CA, and OH
(and several other jurisdictions) have decided wisely to scrap
e-ballot voting machines and go back to paper ballot optical scan
machines after realizing that they cannot be secured - contrary to
what you say is necessary to support your favorite voting method.

> Most likely
>> though, the store will know they will be out of business soon if they
>> try this on anything more than the tiniest of scales, and just not try it.

Well, if incompetence and fraud were cause for voting vendors to go
out of business, then Sequoia and Diebold and ES&S voting vendors
would be out of business by now, but they aren't by a long shot.

However, you still seem to under the illusion that vote fraud is
detectable in any way today when vote fraud is not at all detectable
in the vast majority of states today if it were to occur.

>>
>> Then it is a design problem.

Yes. and such a "small" problem to get the million in funding and take
the almost ten years to bring such a better designed system to market
and sell it to integrate with all the other election systems that are
proprietary, use proprietary data formats and already are implemented
- as you claim.

>>     And which technicians  and programmers do you want the public to
>>     *trust* to ensure that all the software on the VV is doing what it
>>     should?
>>
>>
>> Fact is, you've gotta trust someone, whether it is hand counted, optical
>> read, or whatever.  This is not a new problem.

That is absolutely Not True. Tell me, do you think that democracy is
based on the principle of "Trust" or the principles of "Checks and
balances".

The founding fathers of the U.S. would heartily disagree with you, as
do I, that the public should have to "trust" someone rather than
having transparently verifiably accurate election outcomes as I've
described how to do here:

http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/VoteCountAuditBillRequest.pdf

There is no one in the election integrity community who agrees with
your idea that we should "trust" someone to ensure that our votes are
counted accurately - although you do seem to be in agreement with the
majority of todays election officials and voting machine vendors who
want us to blindly trust them to count our votes secretly without any
independent scrutiny, like occurs in all other fields I am aware of.

>>

>>     Yes. Of course with all of today's VV's you can simply take 30 secs to
>>     1 min to use any of the easily accessible back doors to simply change
>>     the vote counts on the central tabulators, without even installing any
>>     malicious software on them at all.
>>
>>
>> Then that is a design problem.

Yes, a design problem that can only be fixed in a way that makes
election outcomes publicly verifiably accurate (in an understandable
way for nonprogrammers) by using voter marked paper ballots that can
be manually audited after the election.


>>
>> I don't discount that most people don't check the results.  I do think
>> its absurd that someone could change a significant number of votes this
>> way without drawing intense attention from the few that notice, and
>> after than a lot more people will notice.  This is emergent phenomena,
>> that is hard for a simple study to directly measure.

Yes. Well it IS absurd I agree with you - but despite the fact that
many many people have complained, election officials are certifying
election outcomes by assuming that the machine counts are correct -
and with no way to recover the accurate counts other than holding
another election and with their trying to show the public that they're
doing a good job and selected the right voting system, perhaps one can
understand why election officials ignore the complaints, tell the
media that there were no problems during the election, and certify
whatever results the machines give them.

>>
>> It is like any other security issue, that if people don't think it is a
>> problem they are less likely to be vigilant.  If you live in a town with
>> little burglary, you may not lock your doors.  If burglary starts to be
>> a problem, people lock their doors, install alarms, buy firearms, etc.
>>
>> Is it possible that most people today don't check this stuff carefully
>> because they think it is not a huge problem, and that enough other
>> people will be monitoring the system.....

Perhaps.

>> and they just might be right?

And just how do you think that "people will be monitoring the system?"
 Please provide specifics since I've been studying this issue full
time for almost 5 years and do not know how I would monitor "the
system" given today's realities, and you claim that it is *not* reform
to try to achieve publicly verifiably accurate election outcomes.

>> Same thing here.  By your logic, banks could steal 60% of peoples money
>> because only 40% of people balance their checkbooks.  But that is crazy.

WOW. You now claim that banking is analogous to voting?

Should we begin having a paperless banking system where we all deposit
our monies into banks anonymously and then "trust" everyone in the
bank to give it back to us when we want it?

Should we stop subjecting banks to any independent audits?

Then and only then, is banking remotely similar to the problem of
securing voting.

OK. I am leaving the rabbit hole and getting back to reality for a while now.

Kathy