Of Hand Counts and Voting Machines

Play Now -->

DATE : Mon, 10 Jul 2006 19:00:00 +0500
Entered in Database : 2006-07-10 14:00:00
length : 24942145
Link to the Show / Show Notes

Click to Listen to the Show (24 MB MP3)

At this point, we cannot design a [fully verifiable electronic election system], nor can anyone else. Computer systems are so complicated, that there is no single person that understands everything about how they work.

David Dill

Andrew Gumbel

U.S. correspondent, Independent Author, Steal This Vote

David Dill

Professor of Computer Science, Stanford University

Michael Shamos

Professor of Computer Science and Co-Director of the Insitute for eCommerce, Carnegie Mellon University

Gregory Luke

Associate, Strumwasser & Woocher LLP

Extra Credit Reading

Andrew Gumbel, The Coming Ballot Meltdown, The Nation, June 28, 2006. Zachary Goldfarb, A Single Person Could Swing an Election, The Washington Post, June 28, 2006. Dan Tokaji, Brennan Center Report on Voting Technology, Equal Vote Blog, June 27, 2006. Steven Kreytak, Electronic voting lawsuit may be decided soon, Austin American Statesman, July 7, 2006. Thad Van Ry, I voted electronically!, Woods Cross Citizen, June 27, 2006. Tim Grieve, One hacker, a little wi-fi, ... and an election victory can be yours, War Room, Salon, June 28, 2006. Kelly Alvarez Mace, A Riverside County voting experience, Election Updates, November 5, 2005.

5:55

There is a philosophical problem here to do with the nature of voting, unlike a bank machine… you have to divide the identity of the voter from the vote cast. This creates a complication, even with the best will in the world, of creating a fully auditable system.

Andrew Gumbel

9:55

If you have a voting system, as we have with electronic voting machines, where the tabulation devices run on the same software within a given state and across the entire country, then all it takes is one hacker to hack into that system in a presidential system, and they can alter the outcome of the vote

Andrew Gumbel

21:15

An ATM costs at least ten times as much as a voting machine, and if the public were willing- and I guarantee it isn’t- to pay for a voting machine what it pays for an ATM, we could do a tremendous amount towards solving this problem.

Michael Shamos

21:45

The performance of the vendors has been pretty consistent [in Pennsylvania since 1980]: just about 50% of the systems [presented for certification at the state level before the election] fail… When we find difficulties, they fall into two classes: the bugs the vendors knew about and hoped we wouldn’t find, and the bugs that even the vendor is surprised to see. It’s obvious from looking at their faces which of the two types of bugs we’ve located.

Michael Shamos

26:45

The problem I have with statutes in many states is that they provide, in the case of any discrepancy, that the paper ballot always governs. We know from over 150 years of history that the paper ballot is the easiest to manipulate.

Michael Shamos

27:15

There is no Congressional oversight over the whole process of building, developing, selling, and acquiring electronic voting machines. All of this goes on at the very local level, where voting machine companies sweet-talk local election officials and get them to spend a huge amount of money. It must be more sensible to have a national system of standards, and a nationally developed software.

Andrew Gumble

28:25

The only certification that goes on [for these machines] is from a volunteer body called the Election Center, set up by secretaries of state, based in Texas, that receives money from the vendor companies. The independent testing labs that conduct the certification for federal certification do it on a commercial basis, so that they are essentially vying for business. The infrastructure is woefully lacking.

Andrew Gumble

39:50

I am most concerned that there really is nothing in place, in most states where they’re jumping into the use of these machines, to make sure that local election officials are forced to use the machines in an open and transparent manner, and use them in a secure manner.

Gregory Luke

40:40

Unfortunately, a lot of these local election officials… adopted [these machines] on the promise from the vendors of potential money saving. They are predisposed to cut every possible corner… for instance testing 4 out of 600 machines to show that it’s unlikely that any have been tampered with. The laws have to be adapted to the specific vulnerabilities of these machines, and we’re just not there yet.

Gregory Luke

42:20

In Florida there was a court case in early 2002 in which it became clear that it would be a third-degree felony for anyone to try and inspect the source code of the machines, including the election officials who are responsible for running the software.

Andrew Gumbel

50:00

Courts are reluctant to involve themselves in election disputes, it is one of those areas, a penumbra of the judicial branch, where it’s reaching its power… into the operations of the executive [branch].

Gregory Luke

Play in your Iphone