DNC Spits on Election Integrity - Endorses INTERNET VOTING

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

The Democratic Party will manage to kill itself one way or another,
either by walking off a cliff in herds like lemmings, or by

INTERNET VOTING?

[MissWaverly]

1. disagree, internet voting is for those abroad

It would certainly be better than asking enlisted men to walk over to a counter and verbally
say their vote to support staff who would then supposedly fax it to the USA and I read that
those not in the military never got the paperwork or got it too late to vote.

So the Dems are serious about the vote, they are just trying to keep those abroad from
being cheated again.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

3. do you have the full report?

Are you sure that only military are going to be able to do it,
or will it be any US citizen who lives overseas?

Since computer scientists fought this before, what makes it ok to do now?

If you have a link to the full report, would you please post it?

I have little trust in these sorts of things, seems like a new and
much easier way to hack the vote.

We have seen numerous instances where the US Govt has lost the veterans data,
seen that the govt also can't always keep its websites secure,
and the launch of a mulititude of internet viruses and worms
right before the Nov 2004 election.

I guess if its the overseas military, thats only about half a million
that can be manipulated, right?

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

4. Says for Primaries, Experts Oppose it for Abroad too

I don't think anyone would want their vote rigged, whether they are
overseas or here.

But the article says the DNC is endorsing INTERNET voting for the
PRIMARIES.

It says nothing about the overseas. Neither is good.


FORBES

8/18/06 Forbes Magazine

Looking to broaden primary voting participation, the committee also voted to encourage state parties to provide for Internet voting.
Some questioned whether such a step could disenfranchise some poor and minority voters, who have more limited access to computers.

"Because of the ongoing digital divide, we're going to continue to monitor how that's implemented," said Donna Brazile, a member of the rules committee who has been active in DNC efforts to reach out to minorities.

http://www.forbes.com/technology/ebusiness/feeds/ap/2006/08/18/ap2959797.html

From Election Updates at CalTech

8/21 blogged by Michael Alvarez

UPDATE: 2PM, AUGUST 21.

On the DNC website, there is now this brief blurb regarding the 2008 rule changes that
apparently were approved by the DNC rules committee:


The 2008 Rules contain a new provision allowing Internet voting under certain conditions.
Internet voting can only apply to State Party-run primaries and must be accompanied by in-person voting locations and vote by mail. Additionally, Internet voting must include a comprehensive outreach and education program to reach those who lack access as well as certain security and technical safeguards.

I'm trying to track down a copy of the rules.

# posted by Michael Alvarez @ 9:
http://electionupdates.caltech.edu/2006/08/democratic-national-committee.html

Past opposition by Computer Scientists to INTERNET Voting

David Dill, Avi Rubin - It "cannot be trusted"

Verified Voting Foundation founder David Dill agreed. " cannot be trusted," he said. "There will have to be multiple breakthroughs before anyone knows how to make it trustworthy. I don't know the details of the Estonian system, but there is no reason to believe that they have solved these fundamental problems."

Johns Hopkins University professor and e-voting expert Avi Rubin concurred, indicating that even open source software cannot compensate for the challenges and chances for problems that come with Internet voting. "Internet voting is such a bad idea for so many reasons," Rubin said. "Open source does not solve most of those problems."

http://software.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/11/15/1541220&tid=152&tid=132

In 2004, Panel of Experts - Military Internet Voting INSECURE:

Report Says Internet Voting System Is Too Insecure to Use
January 21, 2004
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

A new $22 million system to allow soldiers and other
Americans overseas to vote via the Internet is inherently
insecure and should be abandoned, according to members of a
panel of computer security experts asked by the government
to review the program.

http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200401/msg00189.html

If we don't trust paperless voting, why would we trust internet voting?

[nicknameless]

7. An old post re: connections btwn Caltech/MIT & Right Wing Think-tanks:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=420067&mesg_id=420081

Horrible development. Hope it goes down in flames.

[OnTheOtherHand]

10. yeah, that was a pretty lousy DKos diary

I don't know all these folks myself, but whoever deemed Charles Stewart a pawn of right-wing foundations wasn't paying a whole lot of attention. Really that goes for all of them; Stewart just happens to be the one whose work I have spent the most time with. Katz and Alvarez both contributed to the ESI analysis of Cuyahoga County.

Olin and Hoover basically bought themselves some credibility by investing in competitive fellowships that a wide variety of people won. One can't assume that a former "Olin Fellow" has any sympathy with Olin Foundation goals.

As far as I can tell, the CalTech/MIT "line" on remote Internet voting hasn't appreciably changed since Tom Palfrey (co-director at the time) offered this testimony in 2001:

Internet voting is a hot topic. Absentee voting is a booming business. Both processes deliver convenience to those voters who use it. To a small number of voters remote voting it is (sic) a virtual necessity, because of difficulty or impossibility in getting to the polls. Unfortunately, there are serious security holes with absentee voting. Perhaps the most serious is the lack of enforced privacy, which creates easy opportunities for vote-buying and coercion (and difficult to detect). Early voting should be considered as a possible alternative to "on-demand" absentee voting. Internet voting has all of the problems of absentee voting. In addition, there are serious security problems that remain unresolved, as well as accessibility issues related to the digital divide.

http://www.vote.caltech.edu/media/documents/testimony/tom_palfrey_testimony_final.pdf (p. 5)

EDIT TO ADD: Alvarez has cited all those themes, but he also told the Washington Post back in 2004: "There's a widespread perception that Internet voting is going to happen at some time.... As scientists, we'd like to lay out some kind of rational path that leads from punch cards and lever machines to that logical future." ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36875-2004Jan21 ) I would say that "as scientists," we should entertain the possibility that there is no "rational path" to Internet voting.

[Kelvin Mace]

6. Internet voting is child's play to

rig or impair.

If you like the security holes in TS systems, you'll LOVE internet voting.

[MissWaverly]

9. well, how about this allow individuals to print their ballots

and send them in with a special international priority rate.

[Kelvin Mace]

12. The problem with letting folks print their own ballots

is that is a an open invitation from ballot fraud.

[O.M.B.inOhio]

2. Internet voting only for primaries; DREs requiring voter verified paper...

Better than we usually get from the Party.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

5. Dr. Mercuri/Internet Voting/DOD/ Accenture/ Arthur Anderson

Dr. Rebecca Mercuri writes about the defeat of internet voting in 2004, and at the end of her writing, she points out that Michael Alvarez who is with the CalTech MIT Voting Project has been pushing for this, and is well funded. $1.8 Million grant.

What about Internet voting?
Internet voting is risky due to its sociological and technological problems. Absentee balloting does not provide the safeguards of freedom from coercion and vote selling that are afforded via local precincts. Internet voting creates additional problems due to the inability of service providers to assure that websites are not spoofed, denial of service attacks do not occur, balloting is recorded accurately and anonymously, and votes are cast by the appropriate person. The government's website warns that "it is the citizen's responsibility to maintain the latest anti-virus software for their computer" in order to assure safety, yet they fail to acknowledge the fact that anti-virus software can only protect against known malware (new ones appear constantly, and could occur during an election season) and server-based attacks are still possible. Certainly citizens overseas should have an opportunity to vote, but perhaps this could be handled by setting up remote balloting precincts at the U.S. Embassies, or by creating bi-partisan poll-worker teams on military bases?
Back in 2000 when the U.S. Department of Defense first tried Internet voting they spent $6.2M so that 84 voters could cast ballots. This time, the DoD has engaged Accenture, the Bermuda-based consultancy arm of the former Arthur Andersen (can we spell Enron?) group at a cost of $22M to oversee its SERVE project for military personnel and overseas citizens. Accenture recently acquired election.com (the firm that provided Internet voting services that were disrupted by the Slammer worm during a Toronto election on January 23, 2003) from a Saudi investment group, Osan Ltd. that had owned 51.6% of the company.

News Flash! Following issuance of an analysis by four computer scientists who were members of the SERVE Security Peer Review Group, the Pentagon decided to scrap plans for the use of this technology to cast ballots in the 2004 Presidential election. But it's far from gone -- R. Michael Alvarez, co-director of the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project, who has a $1.8M grant to monitor the SERVE project, wants this "experiment" to continue, as does Accenture's eDemocracy Services group. Stay tuned.
Need I say more? (If so, see the World Democracies and Press Quotes sections.)

http://www.notablesoftware.com/evote.html

[rumpel]

8. Are they nuts? n/t

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

11. I propose THEY want the election to be riggable

Don't you wonder why Dems have not stepped up to the plate r/e
election integrity?

Even in my state with a Dem majority at legislature,
they tried to run out the clock on our law. We had to embarrass
the Dem controlled committees to let our bill be heard for a vote.

GOP lawmakers weren't against it, but Dem Senate Judiciary I committe
changed it 30 times, including taking out the phrase "voter verified".

Nothing happened in our legislature last year without Dem say so.

The DNC DOESNT WANT verified voting, so now they are trying to slide this in.

[Bill Bored]

13. I think it's the DLC.

They want their corporatists to win in the primaries so they want to increase "turnout" with Internet voting and if that doesn't work, rig the election. The real Democrats who care about the direction of the party already vote in the Primaries, hence Lieberman's loss and what I hope will be a closer race than expected for Mrs. Clinton this year.

But they MAY still want verified voting when they have to run against Republicans. They want the Republican Lites to win in that case. Same ones who will win the fraudulent Democratic Primaries of course!

Once again the Democrats have shown that they've become a divided directionless party without any core principles.

As far as DREs with VVPATs, the DNC already said they were unacceptable in the Ohio report, so anyone objecting to their giving DREs a pass now should reference their own f#$%ing report in which their own f#$%ing experts said DREs were crap!

What a bunch of fools!

Are they the same way when it comes to OTHER issues? No wonder they lose so much, aside from all that election rigging by the Republicans that is!

I heard Rahm Emanuel on the air recently, with some co-author of his DLC book going on and on about children's health care and how it's SO important NOT to upset 1/6th of the economy by providing ADULTS with Health Care! I mean f@#$ing Shrub could have come up with a better health care plan than this moron! And he's the head of the Dem Congressional Campaign Committee??? WTF?