David Dill Unpluggd: Computer glitch leaves electronic voting machine advocate without a script

[kster]

by Michael Richardson

David Dill Unplugged: Computer glitch leaves electronic voting machine advocate without a script
By Michael Richardson

It happened at Harvard. Stanford University computer scientist David Dill was at Harvard's computer resource center talking about electronic voting machines. Dill, one of the nation's foremost "paper trail" voting machine advocates, is the founder of a lobbying group called Verified Voting. About ten minutes into his Power Point presentation to the assembled Harvard intelligentsia, Dill's laptop computer crashed leaving him without a script. The irony was unmistakable.

Dill then departed from his prepared remarks explaining, "I know so much I can't organize a talk." The next hour was devoted to a Q&A session that rambled in a self-contradictory trajectory revealing more about Dill than electronic voting machines.

SNIP...Dill declared that any voting technology should be at least as trustworthy as hand-counted paper ballots, which he characterized as the "gold standard" for voting. We should "give up" on audits and instead "empower each voter to check their vote."

"We have made a mistake by focusing on technology; instead we should focus on procedure."



http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_michael__061214_david_dill_unpluggd_3a.htm

[RC]

1. The procedure being hand counted paper ballots.

[AndyTiedye]

2. The Crash of Dill's Laptop Made His Lecture Disappear into the Ether

Just like the paperless voting machines make our votes dissapear into the ether.

[kster]

5. I only wish I could of been there

this article was to good to pass up, slowly we beat the truth out of them, they can't even bullshit about it anymore, they are looking silly when they try, secret vote counting is very hard to explain away, when so many people KNOW AND UNDERSTAND what they, the Politicians are doing. Its time for the Politicians to accept the fact that we know, and then, do something REAL about it, anything less than REAL is unacceptable.

[Stevepol]

3. The lecture was probably more real and interesting that way.

Just as our elected officials are more real and interesting (and legitimate) when they are elected by real votes and not cyber votes, which may or may not actually exist.

[hunter]

4. It sounds more like Michael Richardson didn't understand.

His article is very poorly written or edited. It leaves me with a bad case of :wtf:

I can imagine David Dill disorganized without his powerpoint, but honestly Q & A sessions are always like that. The last one I attended had people who knew about computers asking very detailed and specific technical questions immediately followed by people who had no idea they were talking about, just a mangled second- or third-hand account of something vague that was supposedly bad.

[kster]

6. Michael Richardson, did a great job

[hunter]

8. So did Ralph Nader.

I'll let this rest, unless you want to find a more credible source.

G'night.

[kster]

9. G'night kid, secret vote counting as you

know it, IS DONE, YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST!

[autorank]

7. Damn, how quickly things change. Kster, nice one!!! KR

[kster]

11. Thanks, If only he had printed his speech on PAPER

Dill would have had a back up, that he could COUNT on. :7

[diva77]

10. Same thing happened at LA County pollworker training

"-interestingly enough, with all their faith in these computers for voting, the
powerpt presentation on their laptop froze up at least 3 times during the training
session":eyes:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=455163

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

12. You're doing a heck of a job, Mikey!

Its easy to slant an article by selectively quoting
one word or partial phrase here or there.

The article is a hack job, meant to ridicule
one of the most serious advocates for verified voting
in the country.

Dill has done tons of work for us, and spoke out
long ago when many weren't saying anything.

He gave the issue creditability, and here is some
poorly written article that quotes him out of context.

How about the full transcripts to the talk?
That would be more honest.

The one time the writer actually quotes Dill in full,
Dill's point is excellent.

Whats the purpose of this article?
TO discredit one of the most powerful advocates/ally
that we activists have.

Doing a heck of a job, Mikey!

[diva77]

13. The article sounds reasonable to me. Is there some backstory behind the

reporter that I'm not getting? I've heard that the academics advocating for election protection have had to temper their remarks due to threat of withdrawal of funding for their universities (am trying to find link to where I read that; can't find it right now). That might explain the irony with Dill's remarks. I'd like to see some more digging in that area...

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

15. read the article, see how most of Dill's talk was not in the article

Based on the article, and the out of context attributions,
we can't be sure what Dill really said.

The writer didn't provide transcripts, and took exceptional
liberty by quoting phrases and words and only one full sentence.

Imagine if someone too your words and snipped out one or two,
here or there and tied them to you -

Original DIVA post:

Is there some backstory behind the
Posted by diva77
reporter that I'm not getting? I've heard that the academics advocating for election protection have had to temper their remarks due to threat of withdrawal of funding for their universities (am trying to find link to where I read that; can't find it right now). That might explain the irony with Dill's remarks. I'd like to see some more digging in that area...

Hacked up version:

______ seemed to think there might be a "backstory behind the .."

She blamed "the academics" for conspiring to make mis-leading "remarks due to threat of withdrawel of funding" for their pet projects...

Diva can't find the "link" to the story about that, but is sure that it explains
what really happened on 911.

[diva77]

16. Maybe someone should send the article to David Dill and ask if he'd like to

clarify/change/correct anything in it...:shrug:

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

17. how can you rebut that, and why bother

the writer cherrypicked individual words and phrases.

I suppose someone could try to find a report
or transcripts to the meeting so that we could
know what really was said.

It was Verified Voting who helped me get started
in activism.

It was through VV that I found computer scientist
Justin Moore, who was essential to getting our law passed.

It was through VV connection to EFF.org that paved the
way to me getting pro bono representation in NC against
Diebold and also against our SBOE and State IT dept.

It was VV that provided automated legislative action alerts
at no charge - numerous times over the past 3 years.

IF it weren't for David Dill and VV, our state would have
spent all of its HAVA money on paperless DREs.

He has integrity, he is open to new information, and he
cares about fair and verified elections.

Meanwhile, did you see my thread on HCPB here?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x462218

[kster]

24. I'm a blue collar worker and I need to see the votes being counted

Justin Moore, gives me 7 ways to protect my vote, but never once shows me where to go to see the VOTES BEING COUNTED! WHY?

7 Ways to Protect Your Vote on November 7

1. Vote! Whether you vote on November 7th or by early voting or absentee ballot, the only way to be sure your vote won't count is if you don't vote.

2. Find out if you're registered and where to vote. Check here to verify that you are registered to vote. You can also call your county election office.

3. Verify Your Vote If you're voting on an electronic voting machine equipped with a paper trail printer, be sure to confirm that your vote is recorded accurately on the paper record. If there is a problem notify the poll worker before casting your vote. See our Verify page which also lists which machines each county has.

4. Bring Identification. In every state, if you are voting for the first time and you registered by mail, you need to bring identification with you to the polls. Bring identification regardless, just in case!

5. Election Protection Hotline If you encounter any problem in the voting process call 1-866-OUR-VOTE (1-866-687-8683) for English or 1-888-VEY-VOTA (1-888-839-8682 para la ayuda en espanol).
Voting Machine Problems? For issues specifically related to voting machine malfunctions, call Voter Action at 1-888-SAV-VOTE .With this number voters will reach a live human being with legal expertise and it is dedicated to e-voting issue

6. Election Incident Reporting Checklist for Observers and Voters
This form is a guideline of various problems to look for or to report. I recommend this form to the media as well as every-day voters. You can phone in this data to 1-866-OUR-VOTE or email it to us at NC Verified Voting .

7. Take extra care if you choose to select the straight ticket ballot option instead of marking your choices one by one. See Straight ticket dangers
Straight ticket voting is optional, if you choose it, read the directions.

http://www.ncvoter.net/alerts.html OR http://www.ncvoter.net/jmoore.html

SHOW ME WHERE I GO TO SEE THE VOTES BEING COUNTED,THATS ALL I WANT TO SEE,JUST ONCE.

[kster]

23. I'm not sure he would do that, because

he would first have to explain why computer vote counting is safe and secure, then he would have to explain why his very own computer crashed. I certainly would want to be in that predicament.

Would you? :)

[hunter]

14. Michael Richardson's profile at Op Ed has changed.

It used to say:

Michael Richardson is a freelance writer based in Boston. Pro se election law litigant, Ralph Nader's 2004 ballot access coordinator, editor of Voter Voice ...

If Ralph Nader isn't wandering through the deserts of Iraq wearing a sack cloth and beggig forgiveness of everyone he meets, he should be.

[Bill Bored]

18. Richardson is a hack.

This statement says it all:

We should "give up" on audits and instead "empower each voter to check their vote."

Voters can be empowered to check their own votes until the cows come home, but it doesn't necessarily mean the totals are correct and the wrong person didn't get elected.

Anyone who's anyone in the election integrity biz knows that this is a reference to cryptographic voter verification systems that give voters physical paper receipts that they can take with them and use to "look up" their ballots on the internet after the polls close. It's not necessarily a bad idea, but it's highly controversial because even most elections officials don't understand how it works.

If this jerk Richardson thinks this means there are going to be hand counted paper ballots, he doesn't have a clue as to how these systems work. Most people don't, but this guy is clueless enough not to be trying to write about it.

Sure, it would be nice for any voter to be able to check their ballot online and see that it was RECORDED correctly. And it would be even better if, through cryptography, they could only prove that to themselves and NOT be able to SELL their vote by proving it to someone else. And it would be EVEN BETTER if they could see, without an audit, that all those millions of votes were actually COUNTED AS CAST too -- that the totals of all those millions of perfectly recorded ballots were actually correct!

But what if all this could be done and no one could understand how the system worked?

This hack Richardson doesn't have a clue if he thinks Dill is proposing HCPB at Harvard.

The jury is still out on cryptographic verification systems though, even among computer scientists. But the point I'm trying to make here is that the author of this Op Ed piece doesn't even seem to know they're being discussed.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

19. Richardson is Wrong

Wow, so he worked for Nader in 2000, screwed up elections then.

Now he is supposed to give us advice on verified voting or election integrity,
and he's promoting encryption - you get a "receipt" and go home and
check the fake database and are persuaded that your vote counted.

Good catch, Bill Bored!

[kster]

20. Come on,, the whole debate about the secret vote counting machines

is falling apart, we need VVPAT, we need VVPB, we need to get rid of the GODDAMN secret vote counting machines, You know it and I know it, what will we tell the children? We tried to fix it, but the Politicians that were electing themselves with these SECRET VOTE COUNTING MACHINES wouldn't let us, Come On, CALL A DUCK A DUCK, for Christ Sake. Secret vote counting is WRONG. This article is a rain drop in an ocean, in our fight to get rid of these secret vote counting machines, and yes, You know it, and I know it.

[OnTheOtherHand]

21. well, Richardson isn't promoting encryption

Richardson apparently has little clue what Dill was talking about at that point, and probably other points as well. Richardson seems to have interpreted every word Dill said through the veil of Richardson's own commitment to 100% hand counts. So if what Dill said sounded pro-HCPB (even if it wasn't), Richardson liked it, and if it didn't, Richardson thought it sounded confused and contradictory.

It's actually a pretty easy sort of mistake to make. Not that that's any excuse for writing a rambling, snarky article based on the mistake. (Or maybe it wasn't even a mistake, and Richardson is just setting out to attack anyone who doesn't toe the hand-count line. But I think if he intended to get it wrong, he could have been meaner.) If he isn't going to take the time to understand the subjects he is writing about, he should stop writing about them.

[Bill Bored]

22. That's what I said! nt