Dear Election Methods Experts, A news article published online today in Canadian ITBusiness.ca reports on the ongoing work of the U.S. National Science Foundation's U.S. Voting System Project ACCURATE:
Rogue code could seriously skew US presidential election results ITBusiness.ca - Scarborough,Ontario,Canada, June 25, 2008 1) "One programmer could make a change that would affect 100,000 votes." – Page 1 http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/news.asp?id=48929 2) "If these machines were rigged, we'd never know it." – Page 2 http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.asp?id=48929&PageMem=2 3) "Viruses could be put in the Diebold Accuvote to change votes." – Page 3 http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.asp?id=48929&PageMem=3 Notice that the Diebold/Premier voting system is specifically mentioned in the article. The U.S. League of Women Voters in 2006 adopted a resolution supporting routine manual audits of voter verified paper ballots. An exact copy of the LWV of US position on "US Voting Systems Under HAVA" is posted online here: http://electionarchive.org/ucvInfo/US/LWVUS-Resolution2006.pdf Here is the most scientifically correct and most do-able election auditing proposal (written to be general to any State) which has been reviewed and contributed to by several county election officials, by a Ph.D. statistician, a Ph.D. mathematician, a member of the US EAC Technical Guidelines Development Committee, and several League of Women Voter Members. http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/legislative/VoteCountAuditBillRequest.pdf Winners of federal elections control budgets in the trillions of dollars. There is both motive and opportunity to undetectably tamper with, or inadvertently miscount, elections by persons of any political persuasion, in primary or general elections. As Utahn and retired Army Sergeant Mark Jarman said: "We can all agree that any real threat to polling integrity would likely come from someone with "inside" or privileged access; it therefore makes little sense to allow the "insiders" to have exclusive oversight responsibility. Since polling integrity is really in the best interest of the voters *not* the politicians, it follows that the voters *not* the politicians should be the ones fulfilling primary oversight functions." CORRECTION: In endnote #v. of my June 20, 2008 report entitled "Realities Mar Instant Runoff Voting - 17 Flaws and 3 Benefits" I erred in stating that the Nation magazine article "Boxed In" by Peter C. Baker "espouses the pro-IRV position". I would like to thank "Boxed In" author, Peter C. Baker, for pointing out my mistake. Baker's article in The Nation magazine concludes that "IRV has many flaws" and says that "As an institution, Fair Vote is obviously terrified of admitting possible holes in IRV's armor." Baker provides an interesting example of another vagary of the IRV method by illustrating how a winning candidate could lose by *gaining more votes* from a losing candidate, thus causing a different candidate to be eliminated in the first round. See https://thenation.com/ or http://rangevoting.org/Baker2BookRev.html (Please notice that any corrections made to my report on Instant Runoff Voting have made the case against IRV stronger. In other words, the first version of my report under-estimated the flaws of Instant Runoff Voting. Let's solve fundamental election integrity and accuracy problems before cautiously considering alternative voting methods! The revised report on the 17 flaws and 3 benefits of Instant Runoff Voting is posted on-line here: http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/InstantRunoffVotingFlaws.pdf ) -- Kathy Dopp The material expressed herein is the informed product of the author Kathy Dopp's fact-finding and investigative efforts. Dopp is a Mathematician, Expert in election audit mathematics and procedures; in exit poll discrepancy analysis; and can be reached at P.O. Box 680192 Park City, UT 84068 phone 435-658-4657 http://utahcountvotes.org http://electionmathematics.org http://electionarchive.org History of Confidence Election Auditing Development & Overview of Election Auditing Fundamentals http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/History-of-Election-Auditing-Development.pdf Vote Yes on HR5036 http://electionarchive.org/ucvInfo/US/legislation/SummaryFlyer5036.pdf Voters Have Reason to Worry http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf "Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day," wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1816 ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
