BBV - great FAQ piece ready to go

[Zan_of_Texas]

This has probably been available for at least a number of weeks, but somehow I had missed it.

True Majority has a new campaign, The Computer Ate My Vote. The info is sort of buried in their website, but here is a nice FAQ sheet, written by four of the national tech leaders on the issue. Could be nice to hand your various elected officials. Or your friends -- get them up to speed with one document.


Frequently Asked Questions about DRE Voting Machines

by David Dill, Rebecca Mercuri, Peter Neumann, Dan Wallach

http://www.truemajority.org/docUploads/fscover%2Epdf

[Zan_of_Texas]

1. Also, Avi Rubin worked as a MD election official -- here is his report.

While I'm here, here is a report written by Avi Rubin, one of the four investigators on the first examination of the Diebold source code for voting machines.

(Mods -- this is not a copyrighted piece)

My experience as an Election Judge in Baltimore County
by Avi Rubin
http://avirubin.com/judge.html

It is now 10:30 pm, and I have been up since 5 a.m. this morning . Today, I served as an election judge in the primary election, and I am writing down my experience now, despite being extremely tired, as everything is fresh in my mind, and this was one of the most incredible days in my life.

I first became embroiled in the current national debate on evoting security when Dan Wallach of Rice University and I, along with Computer Scientist Yoshi Kohno and my Ph.D. student Adam Stubblefield released a report <http://avirubin.com/vote/> analyzing the software in Diebold's Accuvote voting machines.

Although there were four of us on the project, perhaps because I was the most senior of the group, the report became widely associate with me, and people began referring to it as the "Hopkins report" or even in some cases the "Rubin report". I became the target of much criticism from Maryland and Georgia election officials who were deeply committeed to these machines, and of course, of the vendor. The biggest criticism that I received was that I am an academic scientist and that academics do not "know siccum" about elections, as Doug Lewis from the Election Center put very eloquently.

While I dispute many of the claims that computer scientists working on e-voting security analysis are deficient in their knowledge of elections, I realized that there was only one way to stifle this criticism, and at the same time to perform a civic duty. I volunteered to become an election judge in Baltimore County. The first step was to get signed up. I filled out a form at a local grocery store and waited for a call from the Baltimore County Board of Elections. The call never came. So, I called up the board and spoke with the head of elections and found out that there was a mandatory training session a couple of days later. I got on to the list for the training, and I attended. There, I learned that my entire county would be voting with Diebold Accuvote TS machines, the very one that we had analyzed in our report. It was an eery feeling as I trained for 2 hours on every aspect of using the machine and teaching others how to use them. Afterwards, I received a certificate signed by the board of elections and became a qualified judge. I was supposed to receive a phone call within a few days assigning me to a precinct, but I did not. So, I called up the board of elections and spoke with the same woman, who assigned me to a precinct at a church in Timonium, MD, about 15 minutes from my house.

I reported to my precinct at 5:45 a.m. this morning. Introductions began, and I immediately realized that it would not be a normal day. <snip>

At around 6:30, representatives from Diebold arrived, and although my badge said "Avi" on it, I heard them refer to me as Professor Rubin, so I knew that they knew exactly who I was. In fact, some of the very senior Diebold executives who I recognized showed up, which makes me think that they knew I would be there. <snip>

[lostnfound]

2. kick nt

[Djinn]

3. kick

There should have been rioting in the streets after the Bush theft. The only thing that'll stop them doing it again is an informed citizenry
:kick:

[Stephanie]

4. Hi Zan!

I just sent that out today. It's very good.

check PM Zan

[greatauntoftriplets]

5. Great find.

Damned computer better not eat my vote. Illinois still has to worry about hanging chads, since we still use punch card voting. But the ballots are scanned via computer.

[cosmicdot]

6. what will happen if on election night voting irregularities rule the day?

especially in 2000 blue states, i.e. Northeast?

what happens if the integrity of the results leave us with a situation requiring challenges in multi-states, etc.

are we prepared for such a scenario?

:kick:

for all I know, the power grid might have a bad day

Parts of Shaker Heights, University Heights, Bedford, Bedford Heights, South Euclid and Lyndhurst (Ohio) are experiencing a power outage, affecting approximately 15,000 FirstEnergy customers.

Several election polling locations are without power, and there are reports of people voting by candlelight and with flashlights.

The cause of the outage is a substation in Northfield.
http://www.cleveland.com/news/index.ssf?/news/more/03outage02.html

Technical Problems Reported in E-Voting
Tue Mar 2,11:14 AM ET Add Technology - AP to My Yahoo!


By RACHEL KONRAD, AP Technology Writer

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Electronic voting made its debut in cities and towns from Maryland to California on Tuesday as election officials beefed up security for the record number of voters expected to cast E-ballots for the first time.

Scattered technical problems were reported in the early hours as voters in 10 states, including California, New York and Ohio, went to the Super Tuesday polls to choose a Democratic presidential nominee and decide primary contests for congressional and state races.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=562&ncid=703&e=2&u=/ap/20040302/ap_on_hi_te/e_voting_s_biggest_test

Frozen screens and malfunctioning computers plagued some voters who tried to cast electronic ballots in yesterday's "Super Tuesday" contests to win the Democratic nomination for this year's US presidential elections.

Experts predicted such problems will be repeated on a national scale in November's presidential election

In California's San Diego County, touch-screens failed to boot properly, causing delays of up to two hours and forcing some voters to other polling places - where they cast old-fashioned paper ballots.

Other counties in California, Georgia and Maryland reported problems with encoders, the devices that allow touch-screen computers to display candidate and ballot measures specific to one county...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1161154,00.html