Jason Kitcat

• Election Problems, What Election Problems?
  USA: Bo Lipari from New Yorkers for Verified Voting provides some more pieces to the puzzle of the odd and low-key way in which voting technology problems are usually reported. Bo also has an interesting post comparing voting systems with the space shuttle

• Some recent election results unresolved — or unresolvable?
  USA: Peter G Neumann (whose writings should be compulsory reading on all Computer Science courses) summarises the 5 U.S. House races still unresolved two whole weeks after the mid-term elections.

• Berlusconi's party tried to rig April elections
  Italy: The BBC reports allegations in a DVD that counting software was used to change blank (spoiled) ballots to votes for Berlusconi. Mr Emanuele Lombardi, one of Italy's leading voices against e-voting, emailed me to say that he thought if fraud had occurred it would have been during the data collection stage when tallies were sent to the Ministry of Interior, not the count itself. He reports that the DVD alleges:

  1) blank ballots were about a million less than what expected by exit polls (and previous elections)
  2) Berlusconi had about a million votes more than what exit polls expected.
  3) The above were the only mistakes made by exit polls. In fact they correctely foresaw the electoral results of all the other parties.

• We have been warned: democracy can be hacked
  UK: The official e-democracy'06 videoblogger, David Wilcox has juxtapositioned a clip of Russell Michaels, co-director of HBO's Hacking Democracy along with a clip of me making for a rather powerful post (if I do say so myself!)

• Bruce Schneier in Forbes: Did Your Vote Get Counted?
  Bruce hits all the key points about e-voting, hard. Packed with links.

• Avi Rubin in Forbes: Pull the Plug
  Short little piece from a few months back advocating the paper ballot.

• Wired News: Did Florida Foul Another Ballot?
  Poor Florida, voting problems again. More on the 18,000 missing vote story I linked to earlier.

• The Collier Brothers: Votescam: The Stealing of America
  Full text of the best-selling book on vote fraud in the US.

• Roy Saltman: The History and Politics of Voting Technology
  Few people can be more qualified to write this comprehensive book than Roy Saltman. Can I have it for Christmas please?

On Thursday 16th Nov I got the chance to see Hacking Democracy at the e-democracy'06 conference and finally meet the film's co-directors.

The film had to make a tough trade-off, one which I believe was ultimately successful. The directors decided not to try to comprehensively cover all the e-voting problems in recent American history. Instead they followed Bev Harris on her journey in revealing the numerous major problems with Diebold voting systems.

Yes, many other serious problems were not highlighted. The other vendors dodged the bad PR bullet. But the directors created a human, approachable film which you can connect with on an emotional as well as intellectual level. Given the Byzantine, technical and obscure nature of election procedures and technologies this is a major achievement which needs to be applauded heartily.

The film has incredible footage which shows the impunity with which elections officials and vendors operate – lying and breaking the law on a regular basis. Seeing legal vote count receipts being binned, Diebold employees lying and a major hack all are extremely powerful. But, for me, the most inspiring and wonderful part of the film is seeing ordinary, non-technical people get to grips with this issue, collaborate through the Internet, and fight back. They chose to make a difference and so can we all.

• Salon's article on “Hacking Democracy”

The Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of Ireland is apparently pushing ahead with electronic voting for a 2009 election whilst allegedly massively understating the costs of meeting the changes the Independent Commission on Electronic Voting recommended and he promised to implement. The Irish Government has stated that the cost of making the changes would be €500,000 but there’s good evidence that in fact a further €18 million will need to be spent.

Simon McGarr has blogged a superb overview of the situation. Colm MacCárthaigh, one of the Irish campaigners against e-voting, expands on his blog with details (including a bit on the Dutch campaign as he’s based in The Netherlands). Finally Joe McCarthy, another key person in the Irish campaign, has put up Fiasco.ie which publishes the results of his Freedom of Information requests thus-far. Brilliant!

• ABC News How does a candidate get 0 votes when he voted for himself? Electronic voting!
  Small town USA: Randy Wooten stands to be mayor of his town proudly voting for himself on election day. But according to the e-voting system, of 80 people in the town, none voting for Randy. Oops.

• UK-wide E-voting after 2008 – pilots pre-judged again
  I just came across the Department for Constitutional Affair's strategy document for 2004-2009. According to the timetable on page 66 (Chapter 4), they plan a Multi-channel elections Bill for 07/08 and 'e-enabled' general election after 2008. So rather than wait to see what pilots say, they're already planning to roll out e-voting. Why pilot if you already know the answer?

• Wired News Election '08: Vote by TiVo
  Jim Adler, head of VoteHere, is a guy I respect, but when he says that for e-voting “the technology is done” I have to wonder. Fortunately a Professor David Wagner (who I haven't come across before) provides some excellent common-sense quotes. Not a bad article with some info on past UK pilots, but not particularly rigourous.

“The fog of war” as David Dill calls it, is yet to lift from the US elections. The Republican's surprising concession in Virginia robs us of a detailed examination of the electoral process. As the activists and researchers sift the problem reports more will become clear.

• 18,000 votes not counted in election for a Florida US House race
  The one fairly firm report is of huge undervotes (votes not being recorded) in the Florida race to replace Katherine Harris' seat in Congress. Yes, THE K. Harris who as the Republican Florida Secretary of State played a notorious role in the Florida 2000 election count debacle. She lost her bid to become a Senator and her Republican replacement is trying to claim his House victory with only a 368 vote margin. But with 18,382 there's some investigation that needs to be done as to what happened, fingers are pointing at the touchscreen machines.

• Avi Rubin's Day at the Poll as a poll-worker (Maryland)
  It's becoming something of a tradition for Avi and, as usual, his blog post makes interesting reading.

• Joseph Hall's Day at the Poll as a poll inspector (California)
  Jo's grant director is Avi, so he unsurprisingly volunteered also. Another interesting read with good detail on how the election went with an optical scanner, DRE machine and paper ballots.

• BBC News online: Can the US trust its voting machines?
  A good overview, as is to be expected from Auntie.

• BBC Radio 4: Today programme on e-voting for mid-terms
  A good little piece as the election started with a lovely quote from Avi Rubin “I'm a continuously amazed by the number of non-computer scientists who are suddenly computer experts. I think its all politics.”

• CNET News.com: E-voting glitches disrupt election day
  CNET have some good coverage with contributions from the excellent Declan McCullagh. This article is a good stepping point into their reports.

• Greg Palast: How They Stole The Mid-Term Election
  Why wait for the months of recriminations and investigation when Greg has done the digging already! Seriously, there is no finer investigative report than Mr Palast.

• Election Protection 365 & Video the Vote Blow-by-blow accounts of problems experienced.

Just posted on the Open Rights Group website

On October 17th the Department for Constitutional Affairs and the Electoral Commission officially announced a prospectus for electoral pilots in May 2007 … This announcement comes at a time when e-voting has been increasingly recognised around the world as a threat to democratic elections … There is easy immediate action we can take to stop pilots happening.

Read more…