[lit-ideas] Re: voting
- From: Judy Evans <judithevans001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 22:21:26 +0100
Monday, October 18, 2004, 8:36:08 PM, JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx wrote:
Jac> Someone explain to me why people in Florida are voting for President
today.
You may wish you hadn't asked.... BTW the voter verification machines
have gone wrong already (Miami Herald)
>Welcome to Wired News.
>Florida a Big Test of E-Voting
>By Jacob Ogles | Also by this reporter Page 1 of 1
>02:00 AM Aug. 16, 2004 PT
>ORLANDO, Florida -- Florida election officials will be relying on
>touch-screen machines to provide the sole storage of early voting
>data between now and the state's Aug. 31 primary election day,
>raising concerns that votes sitting in storage for two weeks could be
>susceptible to tampering.
>Florida law allows voters who can't make it to the polls on election
>day to cast "convenience votes" up to 15 days before the election. So
>beginning Monday, the state will open hundreds of locations where
>voters can cast early ballots for the statewide primary. But to
>ensure that early voting doesn't sway election outcomes, state law
>forbids officials from tabulating any votes until the polls close on
>Aug. 31.
> Counties using optically scanned paper ballots will store the
> ballots in locked iron boxes for two weeks. But 15 counties that use
> touch-screen machines for early voting will store the votes on the
> machines.
>The machines are being relied upon even as criticism mounts about
>e-voting nationwide. Discussions of tampering and security have been
>the subject of numerous reports by academic institutions such as
>Johns Hopkins University and private entities like Raba Technologies.
>An Associated Press poll of Florida voters recently showed that less
>than half of respondents were "very confident" their vote for
>president would be correctly counted, and that only one in five
>respondents was "very confident" in the voting machines.
>In light of the criticism, voter activists in the state are
>disappointed that election officials don't feel a need to back up
>votes cast through early voting. "It doesn't sound smart to me," said
>Sandy Wayman, legislative chairman for the Miami-Dade Election Reform
>Coalition.
>But at this point, election officials who have opted to use
>touch-screen technology have little choice about backing up data.
>State law forbids any examination of ballots until the conclusion of
>an election.
>"The alternative is the development of software that would allow the
>extraction of ballot data without inspection, but electronic voting
>is still an eccentric institution," said Douglas Jones, as associate
>professor of computer science at the University of Iowa. "It's still
>not really on the map as far as writing laws goes."
>Generally, election officials print out a zero-report from each
>machine at the start of an election day to show that no votes were
>cast on a machine before an election. But since voting for the
>Florida primary will run essentially for 15 days, officials can do
>this only on the first day of voting, since votes from each day will
>remain on the machines for two weeks. For every day that follows the
>first day, election officials will have to confirm each morning that
>the number of votes on machines matches the number of votes that were
>on the machines at the end of voting the night before.
>In Miami-Dade County, where e-voting recently came under severe
>scrutiny when back-up files of the 2002 election went missing, armed
>guards will be on round-the-clock duty at each of 14 major voting
>locations to prevent anyone from tampering with the primary votes.
>"Most of these locations have guards most of the day, but we will
>supplement the cost and provide security (where) there are not
>normally guards scheduled," said Seth Kaplan, spokesman for the
>Miami-Dade County Elections Department.
>But in some counties, the votes will simply be kept under lock and
>key. Some election supervisors plan to remove electronic ballots that
>plug into the machines and store them in a different location than
>the touch-screen machines so that no one could add votes to the
>machine. Other officials, however, plan to leave the ballots in the
>machines.
>In Charlotte County, officials will store the machines in vaults at
>the county's two voting locations. In Martin County, officials will
>put the machines in vaults and the electronic ballots in separate
>locked cabinets.
>But Lake County plans to store the machines and ballots together
>behind locked doors at public libraries. Placing voter convenience
>over voting security, officials there plan to rotate the machines
>through different polling locations every few days on a pre-announced
>itinerary.
>Election officials say there is little risk of vote tampering because
>each machine records three copies of votes in different places on the
>machine for redundancy. Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections
>Theresa LePore, who became the butt of national criticism during the
>2000 election for the infamous butterfly design, said every election
>official in the state will be devoting unprecedented resources toward
>ensuring a fair vote. In her county, all functions on the machines
>that would delete votes have been physically cut off.
>But critics of the technology are uncomfortable with the lack of
>physical back-up, much less a digital copy of the votes.
>Jones recently inspected the machines in Miami-Dade County to ensure
>they were ready for early voting. He said the greatest threats to the
>process, such as theft, are just as germane to paper voting as
>e-voting, but the new technology does come with its own problems.
>While those counties using paper ballots can transport the votes to a
>secure location regularly, the only way to do the same with
>touch-screen technology would be to have new personal electronic
>ballots put in the machines every day. "The economics of that would
>be very bad," he said.
>Eleven Florida counties are using iVotronic machines, produced by
>Election Systems and Software. Four other counties, including
>Hillsborough and Palm Beach, use Sequoia Voting Systems.
>LePore said the machinery is still better than the troublesome
>punchcard ballots used by most counties in 2000. She also defended
>the early voting as a way of increasing voter participation.
>Anything that is of assistance in letting people vote is good, she
>said. "Hopefully things will work well, just like we hope they will
>on election day."
--
Judy Evans, Cardiff, UK
mailto:judithevans001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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