Who is Ted Selker? Any ties to voting machine companies?

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

North Carolina's legislature is holding meetings on the fate of paperless electronic voting.

***Next meeting WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2005, at 9:30 a.m, Anti paper committee members Bob Cordle and Roger Knight have requested testimony by Ted Selker, one of the few computer scientists against voter verified paper ballots***

Dr. Ted Selker, one of the principal investigators with the CalTech/MIT Study, will be speaking on Feb. 9, 2005

******Note: Ted Selker is a computer scientist, but his background is NOT in computer security. He shows up wherever voter verified paper ballots are being pushed for. He is one of the few computer scientists known that oppose voter verified paper ballots.

We expect this to be a setback for activists in NC because the media doesn't know the difference between Ted Selker and someone like Dr Rebecca Mercuri.

How is it that Mr. Selker advocates for paperless systems?
If he has ties to the voting machine companies or businesses, that would explain it.

[marions ghost]

1. what is his agenda

he's really making the circuit against VVPB

[starmaker]

2. list of mit/cal papers

http://www.vote.caltech.edu/Reports/wkpchron.html

check out new hampshire article
have to read ted's carefully
he knows computers aren't totally foolproof
can get a good expose of his arguements
ex. printers with machines subject to failure

[starmaker]

3. resume

http://web.media.mit.edu/~selker/publications.htm.

[Alizaryn]

4. I would imagine his bank account would tell "who he is"

and what his motivations are. Follow the money. IMO

[vlad]

5. Diebold friend?

I don't know this guy, just googled around and on an email list for Wash. Sec. of state, he appears as well as direct Diebold person,an ES&S person, god knows who else. If you want to google these people you might find out other things....I noticed steve Freeman's in there... Do sec. of state's do this normally??
-----Original Message-----
From: Elliott, David
Sent: Wednesday, January 29, 2003 9:04 AM
To: 'Doug Lewis'; Yvonne Smith; Brit Williams; Carolyn Coggins; Connie Schmidt; Elliott, David; Denise Lamb; Donna Royson; Gail Audette; Jay Nispel; Jim Dearman; Joe Hazeltine; Paul Craft; Penelope Bonsall; Robert Naegele; Sandy Steinbach; Shawn Southworth; Steve Freeman; Tom Harrison; Tom Wilkey; Brian Hancock ([e-mail]); John Mott-smith ([e-mail]); John Uschold ([e-mail]); Mike Alvarez ([e-mail]); Scott Wiedmann ([e-mail]); Steve Bolton ([e-mail]); Steve Knecht ([e-mail]); Ted Selker ([e-mail]); Tim Knust ([e-mail]); Zoe Hudson ([e-mail]); '[e-mail]'; '[e-mail]'
Cc: Logan, Dean
Subject: Instant Runnoff voting

link>> http://cscott.net/Activism/Diebold/lists/support.w3archive/200301/msg00170.html

[starmaker]

6. interesting tidbits

hart intercivic funded by clear channel's none other than long-time Bush crony and Dallas billionaire Tom Hicks, who helped build Clear Channel into a mega radio monopoly. ted selker is on advisory council of vert inc which is tied to clear channel.he's also on board of advisors for PDII acompany to help drug companies
market products.Nothing on his resume mentions elections yet i did find email blog
that he was on 1588 committee to make recs to election commission of which
mercuri is also working. He is definitely a friend of corporations and even had a short stint with ACLU. They might know something especially how they parted ways.
I would think Rebecca Mercuri and Chuck Herrin could come up with a few questions as his answers revolve not around inherent problems with dre's but with the problems of adding paper printers and that they might fail or run out of ink.

[KaliTracy]

7. Selker -- December 2003 states that a "receipt" would make it too

complicated for the voter

From
PeaceWork
http://www.afsc.org/pwork/0312/031214.htm

Electronic Voting: Threatening or Enhancing Democracy?
<snip>
"However, Dr. Ted Selker, Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences of MIT, and member of the Cal Tech/MIT Voting Project, disagrees strongly. He has developed his own method for paperless, secure electronic voting, and believes that presenting the voter with two or more different formats - such as a display screen and a paper receipt - actually makes it harder and more complicated for that voter to verify the results. "Have you ever tried to compare two columns of numbers?" he asked, and then described some of the longer ballots he has seen with over a hundred entries.

"When asked about the possibility of fraud, Dr. Selker responds with a number of points. There have been no documented cases of fraud, he says, whereas there have been documented cases of millions of votes lost because of poor ballot design, problems with registration, and polling place practices. This, he says, is where the focus needs to be in the immediate future - while securing against fraud is simply a lower priority for the moment. "No matter what technology you give me, I can cut failed votes in half by just changing the registration database implementation, ballot design, and polling place practices." Nonetheless, he concedes that at some point in the future, securing electronic votes will become a more important issue."

{emphasis mine} (remember this was 2003)

***

May 6 May 6, 2004 Computer World
E-voting system security, integrity under fire
Researchers, IT vendors square off over the security of electronic voting
http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/government/policy/story/0,10801,92950,00.html

<snip>
"Ted Selker, a professor at MIT and a former IBM fellow, said there are ways to counter such vulnerabilities. But encryption would be too difficult to deploy in time for the November vote, he said. And in some cases, registration databases remain full of errors -- a problem that led to between 1.5 million and 3 million votes being lost during the 2000 election.

"The IT vendors that make the systems in question, sought to discredit Rubin's research by characterizing it as laboratory work that has little relevance to a real-world voting environment. Some also complained that until last year, election officials were more interested in usability improvements than better security.

"What's been missing from these laboratory-originated critiques has been the real-world experience of the voting booth," said Mark Radke, director of marketing at McKinney, Texas-based Diebold Election Systems Inc., which made the system tested by Rubin and his students. The questions and doubts raised are "theoretical in nature," he said.

"Neil McClure, general manager of Hart Intercivic Inc. in Austin, said product changes should be based on risk assessments, not solely on the existence of vulnerabilities. He discounted the threat of electronic tampering, saying it would require a long-term commitment by a motivated attacker.

Unfortunately, both the IT vendors and the researchers agreed that properly securing the existing systems would take equally as long. "For 2004, we have the equipment we have," said Selker."

***
Someone with strong statistical analysis background needs to be in contact with these people -- it's not enough just to blindly send the counter-Mifosky report published by the PhDs a couple of weeks ago -- we need to find someway to engage them in the problems of this election.
1. 99.9% of computerized "glitches" leaned favorably to *
2. Amount of "breakdowns" throughout the country
3. Modem access for Triad (and others?)
4. I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting at this point.

Find it interesting that Selker talks about Voter Registration as a place where problems can happen.

[KaliTracy]

8. EmailListserve thread Hand Recounts of Votes recorded on DREs

Selker's name on list of recipients.

Posted here is what first appeared when I searched Selker Diebold http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/scc38/1583/emailtg2/msg00072.html

Someone with time and knowledge of computers might want to look at the entire thread -- which starts here http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/scc38/1583/emailtg2/thread.html


***
Re: Hand Recounts of votes recorded on DREs

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To: "R. Mercuri" <notable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Ted Selker" <selker@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Arthur Keller" <ark@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Hand Recounts of votes recorded on DREs
From: "Brit Williams" <britw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 13:09:29 -0500
Cc: <stds-1583-stg3@xxxxxxxx>, <stds-1583-disc@xxxxxxxx>, <stds-1583-tg1@xxxxxxxx>, <stds-1583-tg2@xxxxxxxx>
References: <[e-mail]>
Sender: owner-stds-1583-tg2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rebecca - You did not give any statistics for Georgia. Attached is a press
release from Secretary Cox that states that our residual vote rate went from
3.5 % in 2000 to 0.39 % in 2004.

In 2000 Georgia was using lever machines, punch cards, and optical scan (no
DREs). In 2004 the State was all DRE.

Which of your two categories, intentional undervotes or computer error, do
you think account for this tremendous decrease in residual votes. We think
that the decrease is due to a third possibility: the ease of using the DRE
voting station. We also think that the remaining 0.39 % is mostly
intentional.

Best regards.

Brit

----- Original Message -----
From: "R. Mercuri" <[e-mail]>
To: "Brit Williams" <[e-mail]>; "Ted Selker"
<[e-mail]>; "Arthur Keller" <[e-mail]>
Cc: <[e-mail]>; <[e-mail]>;
<[e-mail]>; <[e-mail]>
Sent: Sunday, December 12, 2004 12:06 PM
Subject: Re: Hand Recounts of votes recorded on DREs


> In answer to Brit's and Vern's questions:
>
> I "get my numbers" from the OFFICIAL reports that
> are issued by the secretaries of state following
> elections. Various studies, including some by MIT/Caltech
> show residual rates in the 3-5% range, as much as 9% in
> some cases for DREs. In the California Gubernatorial Recall,
> for example, the residual vote rate for the yes/no and
> gubernatorial choice combined was 4.98% for the Diebold
> Accu-Vote-TS, NOT 1.5% as Diebold has (frequently) claimed.
>
> Residual vote rates are unexplained because they lump
> together undervotes and overvotes (on systems that have
> those) that may include both deliberate choices by voters
> to skip a ballot question and machine errors. There
> is no way to confirm whether Georgia's (or any DRE)
> residual vote rate is due to intentional undervotes
> or computer error, because there is no way to INDEPENDENTLY
> audit the vote casting and tallying systems.
>
> Rebecca Mercuri.
>
>

Georgia Election 2004.doc (this is the link provided at end of this particular thread http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/scc38/1583/emailtg2/doc00002.doc )

edit for typo

[minorjive]

9. brief bio and general approbation

http://www.electionfraud2004.org

I do not think anyone from Caltech/MIT is to be trusted. Their statements and publications generally support the use of DREs above all else. Their main thing is about getting voters to trust the technology rather than how to make the technology reliable. They seem pretty much like a pro DRE propoganda machine with prestigious university affiliations. Some of their research has collected important data that other researchers have put to better use. And yes, Caltech/MIT is a big problem: the media quote their "experts"ALL the time. There needs to be some kind of serious expose to discredit them.

I don't have time to write a whole essay here, but note that one of the founders of the group, MIT President Charles Vest, has direct ties to the Bush Administration. Actually I've written one critique of Caltech/MIT and other research groups on my blog HungrBlues:

http://minorjive.typepad.com/hungryblues/2004/11/inside_the_matr.html

The profile for Vest, below, is linked from the Caltech/MIT website:

http://web.mit.edu/president/communications/profile.html

Charles M. Vest
President
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Charles M. Vest has been president of MIT since 1990. During this time he has placed special emphasis on enhancing undergraduate education, exploring new organizational forms to meet emerging directions in research and education, building a stronger international dimension into education and research programs, developing stronger relations with industry, and enhancing racial and cultural diversity at MIT. He also has devoted considerable energy to bringing issues concerning education and research to broader public attention and to strengthening national policy on science, engineering and education.

In this latter capacity, Vest chaired the President's Advisory Committee on the Redesign of the Space Station and has served as a member of the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), the Massachusetts Governor's Council on Economic Growth and Technology, and the National Research Council Board on Engineering Education. He chairs the U.S. Department of Energy Task Force on the Future of Science Programs and is vice chair of the Council on Competitiveness and immediate past chair of the Association of American Universities (AAU). He sits on the board of directors of both IBM and E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Co. In February 2004, he was asked by President Bush to serve as a member of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Vest was born in Morgantown, W.Va., on Sept. 9, 1941. He earned his B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from West Virginia University in 1963 and both his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan in 1964 and 1967, respectively.

As a member of the mechanical engineering faculty at MIT, Vest has research interests in the thermal sciences and the engineering applications of lasers and coherent optics.

A partner in Vest's presidency is his wife, Rebecca McCue Vest, who is active with national and international MIT alumni/ae events, student affairs and the service-oriented MIT Women's League. The Vests have two children and two grandchildren. Their daughter, Kemper, is a defense analyst who lives in Arlington, Va., with her husband John Gay and their two children. Their son John is a fellow in cardiology at the New York Presbyterian Hospital. He and his wife Christina live in New York City.

[Helga Scow Stern]

10. I just found his name linked with Conny McCormack,

one who is actively smearing California SOS Kevin Shelley. I am not sure what this is--publications for University of Trier?

http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/m/Mccormack:Conny.html