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--- Begin Message ----Caveat Lector- ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> <FONT COLOR="#000099">Buy Ink Cartridges or Refill Kits for your HP, Epson, Canon or Lexmark Printer at MyInks.com. Free s/h on orders $50 or more to the US & Canada. </FONT><A HREF="http://www.c1tracking.com/l.asp?cid=5511";><B>Click Here!</B></A><FONT COLOR="#000099"> </FONT><A HREF="http://us.click.yahoo.com/mOAaAA/3exGAA/qnsNAA/zgSolB/TM";><B>Click Here!</B></A> ---------------------------------------------------------------------~->Please send as far and wide as possible. Thanks, Robert Sterling Editor, The Konformist http://www.konformist.com November 13, 2003 FROM THE DESK OF DAVID POGUE Maybe Hanging Chads Weren't So Bad After All New York Times If there's one thing you learn as you grow older, it's that life is painted in shades of gray. I find it harder and harder to view any issue in black and white; if you really think about it, you can almost always see the other guy's point of view. Take electronic voting, for example. In 2000, it sure looked like the old voting systems--punch cards, hanging chads, all that--were desperately in need of upgrading. It seemed pretty obvious that electronic voting systems would have avoided the whole Florida ballot controversy. I, for one, spent two months walking around muttering, "Gimme a break. They can drive the Nasdaq to 5,000, but we're still voting with punch cards?!" Then came last Sunday's New York Times, which presented a terrifying report on Diebold, a leading maker of paperless touch-screen voting machines. Eight million of us will be tapping on Diebold computers in the next Presidential election. So what's wrong with that? Wrong Thing 1: Wally O'Dell, the company's chief executive, is a Republican fundraiser. He writes letters to wealthy Bush contributors vowing to "deliver" his state's electoral votes to the Bush campaign. He hosts campaign meetings at his house. He's also a member of Bush's "Rangers and Pioneers" club (each member of whom must contribute at least $100,000 to the 2004 re-election campaign). No matter what your politics, you can't deny that there's a strong whiff of conflict of interest here. Still, Mr. O'Dell wouldn't and couldn't go so far as to program his voting machines to deliver the next election to Mr. Bush, right? Even Oliver Stone would laugh at that conspiracy theory. But then: Wrong Thing 2: The code in these machines is so insecure, somebody managed to copy a version of it from Diebold and post it online. Two studies--one by professors at Johns Hopkins and Rice University, one by engineering firm SAIC--found the current code to be sloppily written, with weak cryptography and "no evidence of rigorous software engineering discipline." Wrong Thing 3: This one boggles the brain: The Diebold systems don't print. There's no paper trail, no "voting receipts." Data is transferred to the election precinct on a memory card in a format that only Diebold can read. If an election is ever in dispute, nobody can compare the digital results against a backup system. As an individual, you'd have no way of confirming that your vote was properly recorded. (My favorite part of the Times article was the story told by New Jersey Representative Rush D. Holt, who's trying to make electronic voting more transparent: "Someone said to me the other day, 'We've had these electronic voting machines for several years now, and we've never had a problem.' And I said, 'How do you know?'") Without a paper trail, there's all kinds of opportunity for mischief. Wrong Thing 4: Diebold points out that the software is inspected and tested by election officials before it's certified. There's only one problem: Diebold engineers can slip in and make changes to the software even AFTER it's been certified. Worse, they do exactly that. A Wired article quoted a Diebold engineer as saying that his team made no fewer than three rounds of software changes to the machines in Georgia's 2002 election for governor--after the machines had been certified but before the election began. (That election "ended in a major upset that defied all polls and put a Republican in the governor's seat for the first time in more than 130 years.") But Ren Bucholz of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (action.eff.org) told me that this kind of thing--casual, uninspected software updates to voting machines that have already been certified-- goes on all the time. The bottom line: Diebold's voting machines appear to present an undetectable, easy, and tempting target for manipulating elections. See what I mean? Even electronic voting turns out to be a gray area. No, wait -- come to think of it, maybe it's a black-and-white issue after all. ***** Calif. will require voting-machine receipts Associated Press Nov. 21, 2003 | SAN JOSE -- In a major victory for voting rights advocates, Secretary of State Kevin Shelley announced Friday that all electronic voting machines in California must provide paper receipts by 2006. Shelley also introduced stricter requirements for testing and auditing of the software used to record and tabulate votes in the nation's most populous state. The move may prompt changes in the type of voting equipment used throughout the country as states rush to modernize terminals. California's reforms address concerns of computer scientists and voting rights advocates who have been warning that paperless voting systems are vulnerable to hackers, software bugs and mechanical breakdowns. Earlier this month, a state agency began an investigation of uncertified software allegedly used in California's Oct. 7 gubernatorial recall election. Shelley made the move not because "voting systems are inherently insecure -- they are not," he wrote in the document detailing the changes. "But rather because people understandably feel more confident when they can verify that their votes are being recorded as intended." Shelley ordered all counties that purchase new touch-screen terminals to provide a ``voter verified paper audit trail,'' starting in July 2005. In addition, voting equipment companies must retrofit touch-screen systems already being used in at least four California counties to include printers and paper receipts by July 2006. The requirement makes California the first state in the nation to force equipment vendors to retrofit machines already installed in voting precincts. ***** http://www.house.gov/kucinich/issues/voting.htm Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich 10th District of Ohio Voting Rights Congressman Kucinich is seeking to ensure that voting is a right secured for all Americans. During the 2000 elections, there were numerous and serious problems at the voting booth in Florida and across the nation. Congress' response was the passage of the Help America Vote Act in 2001. This legislation was designed to improve voting machines and voting processes. However, implementation of the Help America Vote Act, along with its funding and assistance to states, is far behind schedule. Additionally, recent analysis of voting machine software shows that these programs suffer serious internal flaws that threaten the security of votes case on such machines. Privatized Voting, Private Interests Under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), the Election Assistance Commission is charged with establishing voluntary standards for voting machine software and creating an independent testing process for the software. However, this process is far behind schedule. Under HAVA, the Election Assistance Commission members should have been nominated by the President in February 2003. Unfortunately, these nominees have only recently been sent to the Senate for confirmation. Without this federal review and testing of software, deeply flawed software has been marketed by companies and bought by states. An Analysis of an Electronic Voting System was recently authored by Tadayoshi Kohno, Adam Stubblefield, Aviel Rubin, and Dan Wallach. This voting software, produced by Diebold, has already been purchased by two states. According to this study, some of the most serious of numerous flaws permit a person to: -vote multiple times, -view ballots already cast on a machine, -modify party affiliation on ballots, -cause votes to be miscounted, -create, delete and modify votes on voting machine, and -tamper with audit logs and election results. States Purchase Insecure Software As a result of this study, Maryland put on hold its purchase of Diebold voting machines. Later, an independent review confirmed the previous findings. It counted 328 security weaknesses, and concluded that: "The system, as implemented in policy, procedure and technology, is at high risk of compromise" (pg. 17). Partisan Conflicts of Interest The state of Ohio selected Diebold as one of four possible vendors for computerized voting machines. But in August 2003, the company's partisan conflicts of interest prompted public suspicion that the voting machine manufacturer was partisan. In August 2003, after returning from President Bush's Crawford, TX ranch, Diebold's chief executive wrote a fundraising letter where he stated he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." Diebold Internal Memos Reveal Knowledge of Software Flaws These findings of software flaws have been confirmed by internal memos from Diebold employees. Diebold has harassed internet service providers with legal action for posting links to these memos. Congressman Kucinich believes that these memos show why transparency and public oversight are essential in the development of voting machines. >From conversations between employees at Diebold, including upper management, it is evident that they knew of insecure programs and made insecure changes to programs. Among these activities, employees: -Permitted easy access to vote audit logs. Without requiring so much as a password, anyone could access the tabulation of votes and change the contents. (Memo from Nel Finber to Ken Clark, and Ken Clark response) -Sold uncertified software (GEMS 1.14) that was used in elections, while knowing that numerous problems existed with the software. (Memo from Ken Clark) -Changed voting software by sending uncertified patches and upgrades to customers, along with possible bugs (memo Ken Clark, re: GEMS versions, 6/5/2000) -Contracted to "provide products and services which do not exist and then attempting to build these items on an unreasonable timetable with no written plan, little to no time for testing, and minimal resources. It also seems to be an accepted practice to exaggerate our progress and functionality to our customers and ourselves then make excuses at delivery time when these products and services do not meet expectations." (According to an employee upon resignation) Stopping False Copyright Claims Diebold has been using coercive legal claims to intimidate internet service providers and even universities to shut down websites with links to its memos and remove the memo content. Under copyright laws, however, universities are exempt, and posting links to the memos is not considered a violation of the law. By abusing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Diebold has intimidated numerous internet service providers to comply with its requests. The damage is two- fold: 1) limiting the public's information about the security of its voting machines, and 2) expanding corporate control over our most free medium of expression, the Internet. Congressman Kucinich is working to address these problems by providing some of Diebold's internal memos on this site to increase public access, drafting legislation to address software security problems, and working to investigate Diebold's legal abuses. New Legislation Congressman Kucinich is working with his Congressional colleagues to draft legislation that would create an open-source design process for voting machine software. This process would ensure public oversight and transparency, as well as establish the most secure voting software for citizens to cast their votes. ***** HoustonChronicle.com http://www.HoustonChronicle.com Nov. 22, 2003, 3:32PM Democrats approve Internet voting in Michigan Associated Press WASHINGTON -- The Michigan Democratic Party's plan to allow Internet voting in its presidential caucus won approval today from national Democrats. Opponents said online balloting is not secure and discriminates against poor and minority voters who are less likely to own a computer. For the first time, the Michigan party will allow those participating in the Feb. 7 caucus to have the option of selecting their favorite presidential candidate over the Internet, in addition to voting by mail or in person. Democrats in Arizona used the Internet in the state's presidential primary in 2000, where voter turnout was more than double the previous record and about 40 percent of the 86,000 ballots were cast online. Twenty Michigan voters objected to the state party's plan, saying it would disadvantage poor and minority voters and be subject to fraud. "The costs and risks of transacting ballots on the Internet really outweigh the benefits," said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, which made the case against the plan to the Democratic National Committee. The DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee rejected the argument on a 23-2 vote. Michigan is expected to play an important role in determining the party's presidential nominee. The state will have more delegates up for grabs than any of the nine states that come before it in the nominating calendar. Internet voting could benefit former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who has built significant support among Web users. A poll taken in Michigan last month shows Dean with a slight lead among likely caucus- goers, but his support jumps significantly among those who plan to vote by Internet. Seven of Dean's rivals encouraged party leaders to reject Michigan's plan, citing the disparity in computer ownership among whites and minorities. The only candidate other than Dean who did not object was Wesley Clark. He supports Internet voting as a way to increase turnout and improve democracy. Leaders of the Michigan party say increasing turnout was their only goal, not to benefit any candidate. "The Internet will not just bring the Democratic Party better together, it expands our base with our young adults," said Tina Abbott, vice chairman of the state party. Registered Michigan Democrats who want to vote by mail or Internet must request an absentee ballot from the state party ahead of time. They will be sent a ballot that can be returned by mail or it will include a code that can be used to access a Web site for voting. A hearing officer appointed by the DNC ruled in September that no voter will be deprived of participation because of the options to vote by mail or in person. But she required the state party to take additional steps to make voting easier for those who want to participate in the caucuses. Those steps include increasing the number of caucus sites, setting up a toll-free hot line to help Internet voters and identifying publicly available computers with Internet access in minority and low-income areas. The Konformist must make a request for donations via Paypal, at Paypal.com. 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