Fellow activists and bloggers

Vote by mail is the answer
Senator Ron Wyden

As already reported voting difficulties continue to frustrate voters in another decisive election, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden renewed his proposal to simplify the way Americans vote. Wyden has introduced legislation to provide funds to help states adopt Vote by Mail election systems, such as Oregon's.

"The great Yogi Berra said it best: 'It's Déjà vu all over again.' Except instead of the boys of October, we're talking about the long lines and broken machines of November." Wyden said. "Allegations of election fraud and voter suppression were once rarities, today they're business as usual for the American voter. It's time to stop throwing taxpayer dollars at a broken system. Oregonians have a solution--Vote by Mail."

For more than a decade Oregonians have been successfully voting by mail. Up to three weeks before Election Day, ballots are sent to all registered voters, giving busy families time to research their votes and carefully mark their ballots, which are then either dropped in the mailbox or delivered to secure drop boxes at libraries, county offices and other convenient locations. Trained election officials then match the signature on each ballot against the signature on each voter's registration card, before processing the vote.

The transparency of Vote by Mail eliminates virtually all fraud, while addressing many traditional voting challenges:

- Vote by Mail eliminates poll problems--there are no long lines, polls to open late or even confusion about where to vote.

- Vote by Mail eliminates voter roll issues and the need for provisional ballots--ballots are mailed only to registered voters at their official address. Those who do not receive a ballot have ample time to resolve the issue with election officials.

- Vote by Mail virtually eliminates voter fraud--no vote is processed or counted until a trained election official is satisfied that the signature on the ballot matches the signature on the voter's registration card.

- Vote by Mail reduces the risk of voter intimidation--a 2003 study of Oregon voters showed that groups--like the elderly--who are most vulnerable to coercion prefer Vote by Mail.

- Vote by Mail creates a paper trail.

- Vote by Mail increases voter turnout--by eliminating the need to stand in line at the polling place, voting becomes convenient for hourly wage employees and other working families. Oregon's consistently ranks among the top five states in voter participation.

- Vote by Mail encourages educated voters--receiving ballots weeks in advance, gives voters an opportunity to research issues and deliberate in a way that is not possible in a voting booth.

- Vote by Mail saves taxpayer dollars--because there is no longer a need to transport equipment to polling stations and to hire and train poll workers, Oregon has reduced its election-related costs by 30 percent since implementing Vote by Mail.

In September of this year, building on the success of Vote by Mail in his own state, Wyden teamed up with Senators John Kerry and Barack Obama to sponsor legislation to help other states implement their own version of VBM. Wyden's bill creates a $110 million, three-year grant program to provide funds to states to help offset the cost of adopting VBM election systems. States have the option of adopting VBM statewide, within a group of selected counties (or municipalities in states where elections are overseen at this level), or even in a single county or municipality.

"Vote by Mail works. This legislation gives states funds they can use to make the transition away from traditional voting methods that have led to so many problems, so many concerns and so little confidence in the American election system.," Wyden said.

The Two Faces of Diebold
Rebecca Abrahams

In September, 2003 Linda Lamone, the Administrator of Maryland's State Board of Elections and President of the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) hands over a critical study on the security of the Diebold Election Systems machines that count all of Maryland's votes.

Between the time that the State of Maryland commissioned the highly respected Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to evaluate the effectiveness and security of their electronic voting machines and the time that the study is made public, critical pieces of information have been edited, omitted and, in some cases words added, to fundamentally alter the original meaning of the report's conclusions.

Enter the world of electronic voting machines, the "cure" to hanging and dimpled chad.

It is a seamy world of secrecy, proprietary software, partisan executives "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President", politicians asking programmers to design software to flip vote totals, and lots and lots of money.

Please read the entire report

And it is a world of completely inconsistent realities. Diebold and the other manufacturers insist that their machines are safe and secure yet every single cyber security expert and computer scientist has, for years, been screaming into an empty wilderness of media attention, that . . .

The machines can be hacked, by the implanting of malicious code, at the factory.

The machines can be hacked during transport from the factory.

The machines can be hacked while on "Sleepovers" before the election.

The machines can be hacked (in 1 minute with a .50cent mini bar key) during the election, and

These machines can be hacked, at the tabulator, after the election.

What makes this SAIC report, called "The Pentagon Papers of Electronic Voting" by some computer experts, so important is that:

1. It shows, in black and white, that what Diebold says to election officials and voters across the country is not the truth.

2. It shows that there are virtually no security protocols in place for certain Diebold machines and that the recommended security protocols were purposely removed.

3. It shows that the analyzed Diebold machines were not functional nor secure for use in elections and raises serious doubts that they are ready for the November 7, 2006 Midterm elections.

Long time readers will know that we have been saying here all along.

We have repeatedly shown that Diebold lies to the public and to election officials. We have shown over and over that Diebold "bends reality" to its own way of thinking. We have said dozens of times that security wasn't done poorly, it pretty much wasn't done at all.

We have also pointed out that these machines have been "certified" despite all these problems, demonstrating unequivocally that the certification process is a complete joke.

Kuff's World has an interview with Rice University CS professor, Dan Wallach discussing the Princeton Report.

So what the Princeton study did was they were able to get themselves an actual Diebold voting system--basically the same as the ones that are used in Maryland and Georgia and several other states--and what they figured out was that when poll workers are operating Diebold voting systems, there are memory cards that they move around to collect the results at the end of the day. And what they found was that they could actually create a virus that would spread from one machine to the next by virtue of that memory card moving around. This is analogous to the days before the Internet, when viruses could spread on floppies from one computer to another, and they basically figured out they could do that with Diebold voting systems. And the reason why that's significant is that you only need to infect one machine. So you compromise one machine, and then that infection can spread throughout the entire county.

Please get in touch with me! I need to ask you a question about the email you sent me on 7/29/03. This is very important, as we did not get the information you sent.

You will need to be able to verify your identity by knowing the contents of your previous email and the URL you gave me.

Electronic Frontier Foundation
Tell Congress to Fight for Secure Elections!

The 2004 presidential election may not be like the last one; it might be worse. Communities all across America are purchasing electronic voting (e-voting) machines, but there are serious security issues with the technology that aren't being addressed. Most of the machines use "black box" software that hasn't been publicly reviewed for security. Almost none of the voting technology companies provide voter-verifiable paper ballots. A recent analysis from several academic researchers outlines the many and varied ways that anyone from a technically proficient insider to an average voter could disrupt an e-voting system to defraud an election.