More counties pass lever resolutions; What's up with this pilot?

The number of counties resolved to keep levers is climbing, despite the illegal "pilot" that the NY State Board of Elections has announced.

Blog � Resolved: NY Communities Want Levers: "The InterCounty Legislative Committee of the Adirondacks, representing ten NY Counties, yesterday passed a resolution urging the State to allow counties to keep using lever voting systems. Delaware County passed a resolution the same day, bringing the quickly growing total of individual county resolutions to 11. More counties are expected to follow suit."

The puzzling thing is that several of the counties that have passed resolutions unanimously are listed as participants in the "pilot." Rumor has it that some have tried to drop out of the pilot without success. Others are planning a 100% count of the paper ballots and working hard to ensure that chain of custody procedures for the paper are in place.

What's the status of the pilot in your county? I'm working on determining what it is here in Ulster County. Perhaps citizen voices can bring some pressure.

Hawaii’s 2010 elections enjoined by Maui judge

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Looks like some people in Hawaii care enough about the integrity of their elections to ask the right questions. Brad's Blog reported on this article:

Disappeared News: Hawaii’s 2010 elections enjoined by Maui judge: "Judge Joseph E. Cardoza granted an injunction today against Hawaii’s illegal use of electronic voting machines and the illegal transmission of vote results over the Internet. A written decision will be issued in the coming weeks, he said.

The suit (Babson v. Cronin, Civ No. 08-1-0115(3) ) was brought by attorney Lance Collins on behalf of five citizens of Maui against Hawaii’s Chief Elections Officer (see background on Disappeared News in these articles). The suit challenged three aspects of the voting process, according to attorney Collins:

1. The use of electronic voting machines was not adopted
through lawful rulemaking n accordance with the Hawai'i Administrative Procedure Act (HAPA).

2. The use of the Internet and/or telephone lines to transmit
vote counts was not adopted through lawful rulemaking (HAPA).

3. The use of the Internet and/or telephone lines to transmit
vote counts is not allowed under current state law."

The suit was brought by residents of Maui who were concerned that the transmission of votes via telephone and internet could be hacked and votes flipped without the public knowing.

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• Hawaii Judge Issues Injunction Against Use of E-Voting System, Internet Transmission of Votes (bradblog.com)

Two Election Commissioners Comment on the Op Scanners

Nov. 11, 2008 interview with two upstate election commissioners - Lewis Sanders, Essex County and Franklin County, Veronica King.

Sanders raises yet another cost component - the replacement cycle.

My apologies for originally identifying Mr. Sanders as David Mace.

Voting in cyberspace -- Page 1 -- Times Union - Albany NY

Today there's an editorial in the Albany Times Union about the NYC Department of Education's Community and Citywide Education Council elections currently underway on the internet. (Has anyone seen any commentary on this in a NY City paper?) I wrote about this election earlier this week here.

I found this section of the editorial especially interesting. The study referenced echoes the testimony before the Election Advisory Commission from a CIA employee, which I wrote about here.

Voting in cyberspace -- Page 1 -- Times Union - Albany NY: "Studies in recent years have raised plenty of red flags. A 2004 review of the $22 million Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment, conceived by the Department of Defense for military and other overseas voters, raised such major security concerns that it urged the program be scrapped. It warned that using the Internet opened the door to election tampering, vote-buying, viral attacks and privacy violations. Attacks from a lone hacker or an enemy state could result in large-scale voter disenfranchisement, the study warned, and might not even be detected.

Not only is such mischief easy, the study said, but unavoidable under the present structure of the Internet. And, it noted, the temptation to hack into something as sacrosanct as an America election would be huge:

'A U.S. general election offers one of the most tempting targets for cyber-attack in the history of the Internet, whether the attacker's motive is overtly political or simply self-aggrandizement.'"

As someone who tends to err on the side of over-trusting, rather than paranoia, following this election system issue is opening my eyes. I thought of election fraud as a rather local issue, but the CIA and Department of Defense interest underscores its global implications.

The Times Union closes their editorial with this:

So experiments like New York City's are worth close scrutiny. They may point the way to a new frontier. They may reveal the flaws that need to be fixed. Or they may show us that for now, a good old fashioned trip to the polls, or a mailed-in paper ballot, is as high-tech as we want democracy to be.

The issue:

The first all-Internet election, of sorts, is under way.

The Stakes:

We're not ready to toss the voting booths just yet.

I agree.

Most electronic voting systems can be hacked, CIA expert says

Now, just why is it that we're arguing about keeping our levers?

This is a story not to be missed! A CIA expert testifying before the US Election Assistance Commission...

The Raw Story | Most electronic voting systems can be hacked, CIA expert says: "'Computerized electoral systems can be manipulated at five stages, from altering voter registration lists to posting results,' a summary of his remarks said.

Moreover, Stigall said that the CIA believes Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez may have fixed a recent recount in his favor using such tactics. Chavez, he said, controlled most of the voting machines used and may have provided the program that was used to 'randomly' select machines for audit during a recount.

The voting machines Venezuela used were made by Smartmatic, a company that partnered with Chavez's government which was owned by US-based Sequoia systems until 2007. Sequoia also provides voting machines for the District of Columbia and 16 US states."

I hope you'll click the link and read the whole story. It makes the notion of op-scanners and paper ballots seem pretty silly.

And, here's the link to the Election Assistance Commissions transcript.

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• CIA Expert Decries E-Voting Security (tech.slashdot.org)
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• US Election Assistance Commission very selective in reporting of CIA analysis of electronic voting machines (allthingsreform.org)