I'm going to debate our state's Director of Elections on wednesday...

[garybeck]

I just found out that I've been invited to speak at my small town's Board of Civil Authority meeting next week. They want me to come and talk about the voting machines.

I looked at the flyer they sent out about the meeting, and noticed that also speaking is Kathy DeWolfe, Vermont's Director of Elections.

This is going to be interesting. Kathy and I have had many email exchanges, and I know she is sick of hearing all my questions and tired of defending the insecure system we use (Diebold opscans). And just last week I released an audio recording of her boss (the Sec of State) making false statements regarding our election system:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x447701

I'm sure by now someone has forwarded the article to them and I'm sure they're not very happy about it. But if you read the article or listen to the recording, the facts speak for themselves.

This is a little strange because it's not really a public meeting. I'm sure people are allowed to attend but it's not publicized and usually just the people on the Board show up.

All I can say is I'm ready for her. The facts are on our side and I know the facts. And it's not just some conspiracy nut barking up the tree. I have all the world's best computer security experts to back me up now, with the Brennan Report, and the VSTAAB report, which both say even opscans are not secure. In fact is, I am only going to reiterate what the experts say.

Bring it on.

I'll try to record it....

[keepCAblue]

1. Wow. Good for you and go get 'em!

And thanks for representing the true will of the people. May the Force be with you.

[Wilms]

2. Don't be surprised if DeWolfe resigns to spend more time with family

:evilgrin:

Good stuff, Gary.

[kster]

3. It can't be fun for these crooks, knowing that

day by day more people are learning and understanding, what these crooks are able to do with these secret vote counting machines.

At the end of the challenge, ask them to, Show you the votes being counted, tell them, don't try to explain to me how they are counted, but SHOW THE VOTES BEING COUNTED.

Kick their ass, Good luck, and KICK AND RECOMMENDED!

[Stevepol]

4. K&R!! Wish I could give more than one R! Go get em!! Break a leg.

[Stevepol]

17. Addenda: Don't forget the principle of the thing:

When the vote is counted in total secrecy without verification, THIS BY DEFINITIOON CAN'T BE A DEMOCRACY.

It's like a fifth grade class where Johnny and Joe are running for class president and Johnny's best friend counts the votes all alone in the next room. He comes back in the room after counting and announces that Johnny has won. Joe objects of course. "You don't want to be a whiner, do you Joe?" the teacher says.

"But it's not fair," Johnny says. "How can that be democracy?"

"That's how we do democracy in America," the teacher says. "You need to learn that kids so you'll be ready to be good citizens when you get out in the world as adults."

[glitch]

5. K & R for good luck! nt

[mod mom]

6. Excellent Gary, wishing you the best!

[diva77]

7. beware of using the brennan report - it offers remedies for keeping the

machines...they might get ideas

[pat_k]

8. Simple truths and moral principles

You go get 'em!

Hope it is not presumptous, but here are a few simple truths and moral principles you may want to add to your arsenal (in case they are not already in there).

(1) We the People have a right to have confidence in the results of our elections.

We are the sovereigns here. We the People, through our representatives, have defined election laws to ensure elections that are free and fair and reflect our will. A free and fair election is one in which every citizen has an equal opportunity to cast their vote and have that vote accurately counted. Any rationalization that justifies violation of this right cannot be tolerated.

(2) Secret Vote Counting is intolerable.

Many people, particularly those who are comfortable with technology, miss the key problem with using DREs to record and tabulate votes. Inability to secure the systems against data loss or corruption isn't the core problem. Even is a system guaranteed 100% transaction security, it would still be unacceptable.

The problem is not with the software, the problem is secret vote counting..

For the electorate to have confidence that they are being afforded free and fair elections that reflect their will, the processes for qualifying to vote, registering, casting votes, tabulating votes, reporting results and verifying results must be open, understandable, and accessible to every citizen. The guy down the street who dropped out of high school must be able to make sense of the how every aspect of our elections are conducted. (He may or may not bother to find out, but if he does, he needs to be able to make sense of it all for himself. A system that demands that we accept the assurances of experts is fine in commerce or other endeavors, but such a system cannot be tolerated in our elections.)

Not many people on this planet have the expertise required to make sense of computer security, therefore, the role of computers in our elections must be limited. DREs have no place at all.

People reject secret vote counting as a matter of principle. Rejecting DREs as secret vote counters is not much of a stretch.

The fight to have confidence in our elections goes to the heart of who we are as a people. It is a fight that empowers. It is a fight that cannot be limited to the courts or lobbies of Congress. It is a fight that will ultimately be won in conversations over fences, around water coolers and dinner tables.


(3) When election results are called into question, the burden is on the state to prove the results to be accurate.

Too often, we get caught up in details of a specific election -- details intended to prove the election invalid. When we do this, we are buying into the illogical assumption that the burden of proof is on us to prove the results invalid.

The burden is NOT on us. Our right to have confidence puts the burden on the state to prove the results to be accurate. It is up to us to put the burden where it belongs.

In our electoral system, when results are called into question, we must presume the suspicious "official" tallies are wrong.

Just as the presumption of innocence in our judicial system minimizes the chances of punishing a defendent for crimes they did not commit, a presumption of bad results minimizes the chances of of putting a candidate into office that was rejected by the electorate.
See Burden of Proof in an Election.

(4) Disparate treatment alone is sufficient to invalidate an election.

Every citizen and leader must answer the following question for themselves: "Are hours-long poll-tax-lines for poor, minority voters AND none for affluent, white voters a tolerable condition for you?"

No rationalization can justify different public and private answers to this question (e.g., "Well, it's intolerable to me, but elections have always had problems.") To tolerate such disparate treatment in an election is to become complicit with the perpetrators of the condition.

[mopinko]

9. run her over with the solar bus

kick ass and take names gary.

[roody]

10. May the public attend?

If so, please post time and place.

[garybeck]

11. thanks for all your support! ...and an update on our coming 'audit.'

I really am not worried about this at all. I just don't think there is any defense for what they are doing, and the facts speak for themselves. my only problem between now and then is putting together some visual aids and flyers to give out. as usual with things like this, i'll wait until the night before and then stay up all night working on it. i'm used to it by now. the only problem is Kinkos is no longer open 24 hours here in Burlington, but i'll work around it.

i have a few secret weapons up my sleeve. I just found an email from 11/05 where DeWolfe told me thata "audits are not necessary in Vermont." Now that they announced they are doing one, it will be interesting to ask her what has changed since last november.

but what i'm really going to press for is the BIG PROBLEM they have about this audit - they refuse to release any details whatsoever about it. I finally got them to tell me that they officially are NOT going to release any details until just before the election. So in other words we don't even know what percentage of the precincts are going to be hand counted. Or how they will conduct the random selection. I don't understand what the big secret is. Worst of all, there are no written procedures for what to do if there is a discrepancy between the hand and machine count.

so, my neighbor is on the board and will be at the meeting. she stopped by last night and mentioned she saw me on the agenda for the meeting. I told her some bits and pieces of info that I will be sharing with the board, and her eyebrows were up. She took it all seriously and actually jumped on the opportunity to be doubtful of the people in Montpelier trying to tell the locals how to run their election.

I'll let y'all know how it goes.

peace
gary

[Wilms]

16. Please have a look at this, Gary.

snip

In a newly released paper, “Random Auditing of E-Voting Systems: How Much is Enough?”, Howard Stanislevic argues that “Auditing protocols proposed and implemented at the federal and state levels that rely on small-percentage random sampling without replacement are unlikely to detect miscounts sufficient to change the outcome of Congressional or smaller local races, even if such races initially appear to be decided by relatively wide margins.”

While accepting that random sample comprising a small percentage of thousands of voting systems may be adequate to confirm the outcome of all but the closest statewide races, Stansislevic recommends that a much larger percentage of systems must be audited than commonly suggested for Congressional elections. "Each race must be considered a separate auditing process taking into account the vote margin, the number of precincts in which the race appeared on the ballot and the possibility of miscounts concentrated in a relatively small number of large precincts."

snip

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x445924

[garybeck]

19. thanks for that, unfortunately we don't even know what percentage

is going to be audited. for some reason the SOS wants to keep all the details secret.

have you seen NEDA's paper on audit percentages? it has some formulas that you can apply to any situation... Ill try to dig itup.

[Bill Bored]

20. Gary, actually you shouldn't know what percentage is going to be audited

until the vote counts are in. Closer margins require larger audits. The size if the audit can therefore not be predicted, if it's a REAL audit that is. See the paper Wilms mentioned.

If you're saying the whole thing is a big secret, that's not necessarily a bad thing either. After all, you don't want to tip off the vote switchers about how to evade the audit.

On the other hand, if you had a fool-proof protocol, there will be no need for security through obscurity, so this is a point you might want to make. Try giving them a copy of the VoteTrustUSA paper Wilms is talking about, after you've read it of course: http://www.votetrustusa.org/pdfs/VTTF/EVEPAuditing.pdf

[garybeck]

21. However,

If your theory is correct, then all the "riggers" of elections would have to do is program for a wider victory, which would ensure a smaller percentage counted. I do understand that if a rigger was actually going to turn a loss into a victory, and if they wanted to make it a wider margin to avoid a larger audit, then they would have a better chance of getting caught, even with less sampled, because there are more ballots that are "wrong."

however, this doesn't cover "vote trimming" and "vote padding" which doesn't affect the outcome.

I believe you have to step back and consider, we are not just asking the computer who won. We are asking the computer what the totals are. If someone could change the results, they could do it by any amount in any direction, for a variety of reasons.

And don't forget the other thing - computer error. It's not only hackers we're worried about. computers make mistakes, in any direction and in any amount.

We are looking for a system that would detect problems whatever they are. A truly effective audit must detect fraud (or errors) in all possible cases - wide victory or narrow margin. And it should tell us if the computer are wrong on the counts, not just in telling us who won. I'm just as interested in knowing if the computer made a 5% mistake, even if it didn't affect the outcome.

The sample size of the audit directly affects the certainty of the results. Other states that have audits and proposed legislation tell us what the sample size will be. This is done in part so that citizens like me can look at the system, the audit, and decide for ourselves if we have confidence in it. When all the numbers and procedures are secret, it doesn't help improve how people feel aobut the system, which is very important. We can't just put our trust in our officials, just like we can't put our turst into the voting machine companies.

I realize this is complicated and there is no simple answer. But I believe they should provide some details about the audit to the public, and they should announce plans for routine audits on every election.

peace

[Wilms]

23. I'm not sure it's like that.

If I read the paper right the formula takes into account a 20 point vote switching hack. Perhaps it should be more, and that's no more than plugging a new number in.

It's also designed to produce results that are 99% certain (or, again, whatever % you want). There's a graph showing how the certainty goes down as the sample gets smaller.

It would detect fraud OR error, regardless of outcomes being affected (thought that would be self-evident). Audits don't know (or care) what caused the discrepancy (thought that would be self-evident, too), it just cares about finding any that are there.

The formula itself is public.

Really, the way I see this protocol is that you pick the percentage of certainty you want. Then you plug in the reported margin, and make the random selections.

I think that covers your above concerns...+/- X%. :D

[garybeck]

24. which paper, the NEDA one? n/t

[Bill Bored]

25. Wilms is correct. You reverse-engineer the error/fraud.

If you read the whole paper (the VoteTrust one which is not that dissimilar from the NEDA one), you will understand it better.

If they hack a larger margin it will be easier to detect because that requires more corrupt precincts. So even though the sample will be smaller, the probability of detection is the same -- 99%.

You wrote:
"I'm just as interested in knowing if the computer made a 5% mistake, even if it didn't affect the outcome."

Then you will have to "pretend" that you have a 10% margin or whatever, and adjust your sample size accordingly. That is your decision, but the important thing is go by at least the actual margin of the race.

Remember, these audits are designed only to tell you if there's the possibility of a miscount large enough to change an outcome (or to shift the vote by 5% as you suggest). If no discrepancies are found, then there is a 99% chance that the race was decided correctly, or whatever probability you set.

The difference between the NEDA audit and the VoteTrust audit is that the VoteTrust audit also looks at precinct sizes to determine the minimum number of corrupt precincts that could change the outcome and adjusts the sample size of the audit accordingly. I think NEDA will probably come out with something along those lines as well.

The VoteTrust audit also assumes a max. 20% total vote shift in every corrupt precinct and uses a 99% probability of detecting a discrepancy. They justify these numbers with some data but they are not etched in stone.

Since we're talking about the possibility of an entire race being decided incorrectly, I don't think anything less than 99% certainty is a good idea.

Note that NEDA's assumptions were based in part on the Brennan Center's assumptions which in turn were just arbitrary as far as I know. VoteTrust looked at the shift in the 1250 exit poll precincts from 2000 to 2004 to come up the 20% number -- not the exit polls, the vote counts in the exit poll precincts. They showed that you just don't see many precincts shifted more than 20% from one election to the next, so it's a pretty good maximum estimate.

Note also that if a candidate is already ahead in a precinct, it reduces the size of the vote shift that's possible because the opposing candidate doesn't have that many votes to shift! So there are finite limits to vote shifting and anything more than 20% would actually stick out like a sore thumb.

[emlev]

12. Go get 'em, Garybeck!

I assume you're bringinging a bagful of CDs with you for the fan club you'll have by the end?

[garybeck]

13. better than that

the CD is getting outdated. I have a beta version of a DVD i've been working on and i'll have a few copies. it has every Lou Dobbs segment on e-voting. this is really great for newbies, not only for the info, but when they see it's on CNN, they know it's real. and Dobbs is great, with his rants.

[emlev]

14. Kewl. Has Dobbs covered the new "constitutional" strategy?

If you don't know what I mean, looky here:

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3372

[wiley]

15. Too late to nominate as BFP Ever!

I just had a Democracy O!


:kick:


Always use protection! Every Time!

[emlev]

18. ;-)

[rumpel]

22. Sorry, I am late in responding

been swamped with other stuff -

just wanted to say - go get them!

and thanks for your hard work too. :)