- Here is a sobering collection of quotes about electronic
voting by experts around the country prepared by Kathy Dopps,National Election
Data Archive. All of our elected officials should read it, and then take
the appropriate actions needed to protect our democracy.
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- What do the Experts Say??
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- Only real recounts (cross-checking paper records against
official tabulations), not just rereading machine totals, will resolve
close elections. October, 2006 The American Statistical Association
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- http://www.amstat.org/news/StatisticalIssuesInElections.pdf
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- Computer viruses ... can spread malicious software automatically
and invisibly from [Diebold] machine to machine during normal pre- and
post-election activity and even careful forensic examination of these records
will find nothing amiss anyone who has physical access to a voting machine
or to a memory card can install said malicious software in as little as
one minute. Some of these problems cannot be remedied without replacing
the machine's hardware. Princeton University Computer Scientist Ed Felton
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- http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/
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- Technicians or election officials could be producing
infected memory cards without any knowledge of what they were doing. We'll
never have secure machines if the vendors succeed in keeping the inner
workings of their machines secret from the security experts.... Secrecy
is not the road to security. The Princeton report describes two attacks:
a vote-altering attack and a Denial-of-Service attack Yale University Computer
Scientist Dr. Michael Fischer
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- http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/article.php?id=6387
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- The current generation of electronic (DRE) voting machines
are not secure, do not provide voters with a way to know that their votes
are being tabulated correctly, and do not provide a mechanism for effective
recounts when errors arise. As such, they represent an unacceptable technical
risk, regardless of how people feel about them.? Brigham Young University
& University of Utah Computer Scientists (Carter, Windley, Brundvand,
Gopalakrishnan, Hanscom, Jones, Lee, Regehr, Seamons, Shirley, Drake)
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- http://utahcountvotes.org/voting_system_advice.pdf
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- The basic problem of e-voting can be understood without
an in-depth knowledge of computer technology. Here is a helpful analogy:
Suppose voters dictated their votes, privately and anonymously, to human
scribes, and that the voters were prevented from inspecting the work of
the scribes. Few would accept such a system, on simple common-sense grounds.
Obviously, the scribes could accidentally or intentionally mis-record the
votes with no consequences. Without accountability, a system is simply
not trustworthy, whether or not computers are involved. and You don't
need a Ph.D. in computer science to understand the basic problem with computerized
voting. Computer systems are so complex that no one really knows what goes
on inside them. We don't know how to find all the errors in a computer
system; we don't know how to make sure that a system is secure or that
it hasn't been corrupted (possibly even by its designers); and we don't
know how to ensure that the systems in use are running the software they
are supposed to be running. Stanford Computer Scientist David Dill
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- http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article.php?id=5789
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- Diebold's system is utterly unsecured. The entire cyber-security
community is begging them to come back to reality and secure our nation?s
voting. Pentagon Cyber-Security Advisor Stephen Spoonamore
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- http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Technology/story?id=2596705&page=2
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- We conclude that this voting system [Diebold] is unsuitable
for use in a general election. Johns Hopkins University Professor of Computer
Science Avi Rubin in a paper presented at the 2004 IEEE Symposium on Security
and Privacy.
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- There are no standards. There is no scientific research
... there's an erosion of voting rights implicit in the inability to trust
the technology that we use and if we were another country being analyzed
by America, we would conclude that this country is ripe for stealing elections
and for fraud.? DeForest Soaries, Former US Election Assistance Commission
Chairman 2004-2006 (appointed by Bush)
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- ??Many of the hard drives and apparently all of the motherboards
of the voting machines are Made in China.? China is known to be attacking
the Dept of Defense, Commerce Dept and other government computers.? The
motherboard controls the computer and hiding a malicious program in the
boot sector of a hard drive isn?t much of a trick, one has to assume that
some or all of the Diebold voting machines are potentially, even probably
controlled by China (Security 101).? And ?Diebold is based on Microsoft
Windows. No other operating system in the world is as subject to so many
viruses, Trojan horses, hack tools, worms, or other attacks..? and ?Diebold
has repeatedly used uncertified and untested software and hardware in elections,
making a mockery of even the weak certification and testing procedures
in place.? And ?Diebold has repeatedly failed to correct known security
flaws and software bugs.? and ?It has become easy to determine that a Diebold
representative is dissembling. His, or her lips are moving.? Dr. Charles
Corry, Colorado Springs, CO, former IEEE (the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers) member of the voting system guidelines committee
for 4 years (& former Marine corporal) October, 2006
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- Some believe that computer touch screen machines are
the future of electoral systems, but the technology simply fails to pass
the test of reliability. As anyone who uses one can attest, computers break
down, get viruses, lose information, and corrupt data. We know this to
be the case, and so we back-up our files to ensure nothing important is
lost. Paper ballots serve as the ultimate back-up for our elections, providing
secure and permanent verification of the will of the people....When a vote
is cast, a vote should be counted. With paper ballots we will have a record.
With paper ballots the fundamental principle of one person, one vote is
safe. Democratic Governor Bill Richardson NM
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- http://utahcountvotes.org/US/GovRichardsonLtr20060301.pdf
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- Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) called for the
state to scrap its $106 million electronic voting apparatus and revert
to a paper ballot system for the November [2006] election. "When in
doubt, go paper, go low-tech," he said. Ehrlich advocated leasing
optical scan machines that use paper ballots... Republican Governor Robert
Ehrlich MD Washington Post Thursday, September 21, 2006
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- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/20/AR2006092001356.html
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- All three voting systems have significant security and
reliability vulnerabilities, which pose a real danger to the integrity
of national, state, and local elections. and Few jurisdictions have implemented
any of the key countermeasures that could make the least difficult attacks
against voting systems much more difficult to execute successfully. The
Brennan Center (NYU Law School) Brennan Center experts include statistical
consultant, professor University of California at Davis; Electronic Privacy
Information Center; professor Stanford University, PhD, Cyber Defense Agency
LLC; former CEO of F-Secure PLC; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
and Chair of the California Secretary of State's Voting Systems Technology
Assessment and Advisory Board; prof. University of Iowa; PhD NIST; PhD,
NIST; prof. MIT; Former Chief Security Officer, Microsoft and eBay Counterpane
Internet Security; PhD, formerly of the Computer Science; Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory at MIT; prof. University of California at Berkeley; prof. Rice
University; Electronic Frontier Foundation
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- http://www.brennancenter.org/programs/downloads/SecurityExecSum7-3.pdf
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- It seems that integrity and honesty aren't terribly important
at Diebold... and We send people to death row on flimsier and more circumstantial
evidence... How much are you willing to pay for secure trustworthy elections?
What more would these machines have to do to prove they?re dangerous,
whistle Dixie while they miscount our votes Andrew Kantor, technology writer
for USAToday, former editor PC Magazine and Internet World.
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- http://www.usatoday/tech/columnist/andrewkantor/2006-09-29-diebold_x.htm
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- Kathy Dopp http://utahcountvotes.org/docs/WhatdotheExpertsSay.pdf
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- Allegra Dengler 60 Judson Avenue Dobbs Ferry, NY 10522
914-693-8023 http://citizensforvotingintegrity.org/ http://www.nyvv.org/
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