A possible campaign for verifiable elections?

[Stevepol]

There are many of us around DU who are aware of the enormous cost of using voting machines to count votes in the US. Many of us are aware, as Jonathan Simon points out in his recent book CODE RED: COMPUTERIZED ELECTION THEFT AND THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY, that the vote in almost every state is either entirely unverifiable or almost never verified no matter how suspicious the results. At the same time, there is overwhelming statistical evidence that the malicious programming and hacking of voting machines has skewed the results of elections steadily to the right. Here in Kansas, for example, Kris Kobach is doing all he can to prevent Beth Clarkson, a statistician at Wichita State, from counting the (supposed) paper trail of the last election. She is convinced on the basis of her calculations (published in both American Statistical Assn and the Royal Statistical Society) that "some voting systems were being sabotaged." I doubt she will be able to move the powers that be. They are too entrenched right now, but there is always the possibility.

I have often just thrown my hands up in frustration and decided that there's no help for it. Nobody seems willing to do anything about it. But maybe there is something that we can do together. Simon in the book mentioned above says that a number of statisticians have proposed and come to a kind of agreement about a "risk-limiting audit," (an RLA) as a very useful solution to the problem of unverifiable elections (p. 81ff in the above book). What I might suggest is that some of us might join together in a campaign to fight for "verifiable vote counting" in US elections. If we could form a group centered on that ONE IDEA, verifiable elections, and repeat that mantra over and over and over ad infinitum, we might eventually begin to gain some traction. It's an easily provable fact that the elections are not verified. Generally, the attitude is that what takes place inside the machine remains in the machine.

What we would be fighting for is the use of opti-scans (or where that is impossible, touch screens that print out a voting result that can be counted) and the auditing of a percentage of paper ballots from each election to make sure the election has not been rigged or stolen. The statisticians Simon mentions have developed a simple procedure that would be easy for election officials to follow in the verification process. The only thing holding it up is the opposition of those in charge of the counting, and that's where our campaign would be aimed: at Kobach and others like him across the country who refuse to permit the vote to be verified statistically while they demand voter suppression through voter ID's etc. in order to meet a non-existent threat of voter fraud.

I can see a strong organization like those that have formed in the past to deal with segregation or women's suffrage or whatnot, bumper stickers ("VERIFY THE VOTE!&quot , letters to the editor all over the country on one theme, etc. I'd be willing to help fund such an effort and I think eventually enough people could be convinced to join the campaign that it could succeed. We need it now more than ever with Bernie running and other candidates beginning to be moved in his direction. But it won't make any difference if the vote continues to be essentially rigged, especially in certain, usually lower level or local elections.

Does anybody else agree with me? Let me know. I personally cannot take a leading role in any such organization to carry out the campaign, but I would be more than willing to help out and I suspect that there are many like me, maybe a very large number.

[Thinkingabout]

1. On the Diebold booth i vote on allows for the opportunity for verification before CAST BALLOT.

I would be more concerned about the loss of secret ballot by having ballots printed at the end of voting. I care dearly about the opportunity to vote without others knowing who I voted. It would seem like too much possible means to intimidate a voter by those who may want to control the election results.

[Stevepol]

2. The danger is much greater of losing privacy in the present set-up

As it is now, it's only the ones who have access to the machines or to the company officials who help program the machines and makes use of the memory cards, etc. to transfer the totals to the central tabulators, etc.

Beth Clarkson, for example, makes the point that her statistical check would not require anybody to reveal the names of any voter. She would only be dealing with the vote itself, the paper ballot or the touch screen print-out. That is part of her law suit presently being considered in KS.

[Thinkingabout]

3. Are you saying the voter should have the capability of printing out their ballot after voting?

[Stevepol]

4. No I'm talking about the two main types of voting machines.

One type is the touch-screen, where you only press the buttons or depress certain places on the screen to indicate your vote. These machines became notorious for their suspicious results (as in the GA 2002 election where the votes were counted completely in cyber space, no paper at all). The touch-screen machines can be and now usually are outfitted with a device like the print-out at a grocery store after you buy you groceries, except that the voter can't take it with him or her. The print-out can be checked by the voter as it prints out but it remains with the machine and is supposedly retained in case of a need for a recount or audit. This is what Beth Clarkson wants to look at, the print-out that supposedly tells the tale of each particular vote. The voter's name is not on the print-out. Kobach won't let her look at these print-outs.

Another type, the preferable type, the opti-scan, uses paper. The voter votes entirely on paper. The machine is used only to count the votes by running the paper ballots through the machine. I suppose the vote is numbered so it can be matched with the voting rolls but Clarkson would only look at the paper ballots. She would not be matching the number on the ballot with the list of voters. Clarkson is only trying to make sure that the machine has not been illegally or maliciously programmed so as to rig the vote, and the only way to check this is ON PAPER.

Kansas uses both these types of machines, and both types can be maliciously programmed when those in charge are screwballs and cheats.

[Thinkingabout]

5. This isn't the type of machine used in Texas, actually it is eslate and isn't touch screen.

http://www.votetexas.gov/voting-systems/hart-intercivic-eslate

I have considered voting by mail but trust it less than the machines.

[Downwinder]

6. Why not? I get an ATM receipt.

Grocery stores and other business give me an itemized receipt.

[Thinkingabout]

7. We are entitled to secret ballot of which I value.

[Downwinder]

8. A printout would not make it any more or less secret.

My ATM receipts are secure, except for the programmers same as voting.

[Thinkingabout]

12. So if I have a printout of my ballot are you saying someone else can not read the ballot?

[Downwinder]

13. Only if you permit it.

[Thinkingabout]

14. Perhaps in some cases, in cases of a controlling mate it is not this simple, you have to think

outside of the box. If anyone sees your ballot it is not secret voting anymore.

[Jim Lane]

17. But the voter could be improperly pressured to permit it.

Scenario 1: "I, Hollingsworth Hound, will pay $10 for each vote for Mortimer Snerd for Senate. Come see me on Wednesday, bring the printout that proves you voted for him, and you'll get your cash."

Right now, vote-buying is illegal, but the main obstacle to it is that it's unverifiable. Voters can take the crooked millionaire's money but still vote any way they please. Printouts would change that.

Scenario 2: First thing Wednesday morning, one of the employees at Megalith Corp. tapes his printout to his office door or cubicle wall. Others emulate him. The CEO, who happens to be Snerd's sister, takes to strolling through the office and checking out these decorations. She notes who has posted a slip showing a vote for Snerd's opponent. She also notes who hasn't posted anything and, not being an idiot, she draws the obvious conclusion.

This scenario isn't even illegal.

We need verifiable voting but we can't just model it on ATM receipts.

[eridani]

9. Why ATMs are nothing at all like voting machines

Last edited Tue Aug 4, 2015, 05:05 AM - Edit history (1)

ATM software is open, but voting software is proprietary

Banks insist that all code in ATMs be fully disclosed to them and they won't trust their money or their depositors’ money with anything less. Voting software by comparison is considered proprietary. Companies that make both ATMs and voting machines proudly boast of their open source software for ATMs in their advertising. This situation could conceivably be changed by demanding that voting software also be fully disclosed, but there are other reasons why open source code is not by itself sufficient to make voting machines like ATMs. For example, it would be necessary to match the code on all voting machines to verify its identity with the true open source master code immediately prior to each election. But even then, any diskette or other similar device could introduce a virus or other malware that deletes itself. Furthermore, human beings can not observe the vote counting even in open source environments.

In addition, there is the problem that open source code itself is not necessarily "knowable". One can think of the law as being open source "code", free of copyright and at least in theory available to all in free libraries. However, like the extensive areas of code in computer programs that often have unknown functions or utility, even a lawyer who spends his life studying the law doesn't understand how every bit of the "open source" law works, nor can we the people realistically understand even a fraction of exactly how the open source code for voting machines would work. Even with open source code, then, we would be required to accept election results on trust or faith, which is the opposite of checks and balances.

Were the code of the voting machine vendors suddenly opened up or disclosed, it would take a long time to understand it, we may in fact never understand it, and those who do understand will only be a handful of experts with a lot of time on their hands, probably paid by the government or a vendor and not loyal solely to the public.

Individual ATM transactions can be tracked, but individual secret ballots cannot be tracked

Every transaction in an ATM is completely tracked with redundant account numbers traceable to the account holder, and your transaction is photographed or videotaped for security purposes. In contrast, a secret ballot cannot possibly be associated with such an identifying number and still remain secret. The very secrecy of the ballot creates a virtually untraceable system that is wide open to both fraud and the cover-up of material irregularities. It is not feasible to provide a receipt in elections to prove a transaction because of concerns about using it to sell votes, though this concern might be addressed by making verification available only to the voter in secure locations like the elections offices.

To make ATM banking perfectly analogous to the process of voting, you'd have to have every account holder at a bank make a non-traceable (secret ballot) cash deposit on the same day (election day) by dropping this anonymous deposit (ballot) into a large bin (ballot box). Bank officers would then calculate the total amount of money deposited in secret with no public oversight, but not start counting until after the bank (polls) close. The account holders (the voting public) would then come back at the closing of the business day (election night) with the media in tow demanding instantly reliable bank balances and overall account results within minutes or hours of the closing of the bank (polls). Bankers (election officials) would insist along with some in the media that the convenience of speedy results was far more important than accuracy in one's bank account (election results).

The insane rush to count the bank deposits (ballots) within minutes or hours on election night would them be used as a primary argument for making the banking deposits invisible and unverifiable by converting them to electrons, so that they could be processed all the more quickly and conveniently. Hopefully it is obvious that in such elections we would be putting intense pressure on a very fragile and inherently unauditable system. In contrast, public and auditable systems can work only at deliberate, and visible, speed.

ATM errors typically have no consequence for users because they are correctable, but ballot tabulation errors have very serious consequences that are usually not correctable

With banks, you have at least 60 days after receiving your statement, if not much longer, to contest and challenge the transactions involving your account. With voting, there is no possibility at all of correcting your vote after you leave the polling place. In fact, voters are considered legally incompetent to contest their ballots with extrinsic evidence under stringent anti-challenge provisions. Election contest laws are subject to extremely short statutes of limitation such as ten days. At any rate, you couldn't locate your own specific ballot for purposes of challenging its tabulation, and some elections officials have preemptively cited academic research purporting to suggest that significant numbers of voters "don't accurately remember their own votes" after having voted, in order to cast doubt on members of the public who may wish to question the tabulation of their own votes. Thus, nothing is allowed to impeach or contest the rushed count, not even the voters themselves were they somehow able to show their own ballots counted incorrectly.

Broken touch screen voting machines have disenfranchised many, many people who have had to get back to work or school before a functioning one could be made available to them during limited voting hours. A broken ATM just means that you have to go to another bank branch or supermarket, at any hour of the day or night. In the case of voting, touch screen machines are expensive bottlenecks where you may be forced to stay in a long line at only one polling place. You usually cannot go elsewhere to cast your vote, though in some states a provisional ballot may be allowable.

In summary, you vote untraceably (assuming that you aren’t turned away unable to access a functioning machine, or by long lines), you're not allowed to challenge or change even your own vote, you're not trusted to remember it, and then the elections officials refuse to disclose their data (ballots) or their analysis methods (counting software) on the grounds of trade secrecy, only releasing their conclusions (election results).

Such a system has absolutely none of the safeguards built into ATMs, which have quadruple redundancy. If you take out $100, you can count the five crisp $20s, check the receipt, cross-reference it with your bank statement listing individual transactions tagged with unique numbers, and if necessary, request the photo of you making the transaction.

ATMs have extensive real world testing that vote counting systems can never have

Principles of elementary systems analysis dictate that any complex system, whether mechanical or electronic, is highly unlikely to ever be free of bugs. Such systems can, however, eventually be made robust and reliable by banging them against reality hard and often. ATMs are part of a complex system that has had most of the bugs worked out of it by being constantly tested in the real world, billions of times an hour, 24/7, 365 days a year. Even so, they still malfunction occasionally, though if you run into one that isn’t working it’s usually a minor hassle to find another one.

In contrast, voting is something we do a couple of times a year, and letting machines with complex hardware and software do it for us means that elections must inevitably always be a beta test. This is why you rarely hear of ATMs that don’t work because of heat or cold or humidity, but commonly hear of voting machine breakdowns for those reasons and many others. If we only drove our cars for a couple of hours once a year, they'd suck pretty badly too. Beta test mode is absolutely unacceptable for something as important as voting.

Moreover, even if billions were spent on ATMs, there is no conceivable way that we would all be able to use an ATM in the same 14 hour time period, even under completely optimal and bug-free conditions. Forcing voters to use electronic voting machines means forcing them to stand in long lines instead of the five minute service guarantees we are used to in stores. The "promised land" of electronic voting promises only convenience for election officials, inherent invisibility of mistakes (which appeals to both vendors and election officials), and replicates the situation we now have with school systems whereby rich districts get great service and poor districts get poor service. The ultimate effect of electronic voting is therefore structural disenfranchisement of the poor by the forced bottlenecks of expensive machines.

We can safely entrust others with tracking ATM transactions, but we can only trust ourselves to supervise vote tabulation

The current situation is this. We now have no basis for confidence in election results because the data and the method of its analysis are never disclosed—only conclusions (election results) are disclosed. Voters are considered legally incompetent to change or challenge their votes, or even to recall what those votes were. Voters are widely considered by elections officials to be the cause of machine malfunctions themselves, resulting in delayed responses to fix them. Furthermore, the poll workers are not supposed to observe the voters and therefore can't easily verify whether a given problem is a machine problem or a voter problem. (Would any self-respecting software engineers refuse to include an undo function in their word-processing program, and then blame users for not being smart enough to avoid mistakes 100% of the time? Most “user” error is really system design error—real world testing should result in errors being hard to make and easy to recover from.)

We need to fight for democracy here in our time, meaning that the government must serve the public, which is the ultimate source of political power, and not the other way around. Public "servants" should not seek their own convenience and insulation from accountability for mistakes, but should instead be rewarded for falling on their swords and reporting problems voluntarily and immediately.

We the People must insist on vote counting methods that are transparent and public, that have robust checks and balances, and that keep fully in mind the very unique features of elections that make them not analogous to much of anything else. Thomas Jefferson anticipated every generation would need a revolution in democratic values to remember the inalienable rights of We the People and assert them against government officials who (quite naturally and even understandably) believe that their full time specialist status entitles them to special rights, because that is the route to something other than democracy, something other than We the People being in charge.

[Stevepol]

10. A wonderful summary of the situation but

what do you think of the idea of having a group to fight for ONE idea: verifying the vote using a statistical method that would at least provide a good measure of proof that the result of any election is not fabricated or rigged?

Using the method suggested by the statisticians would not attempt to change any single fact on the ground, just add ONE thing: a statistical check, easily administered, that could give the voter at least a little assurance that the thing is not entirely corrupt and rigged by the powers that be in the state or voting precinct.

[eridani]

11. I absolutely agree that this would help turn up skullduggery

The key thing, though (IMO), is audits. Opscan has paper ballots that can be audited by handcount. Unfortunately, in most places audits are nowhere near as extensive to make us confident of election results.

[Stevepol]

15. This is what the group would be for:

to make people aware of the need for audits all over the country in every election.

On July 22, Rhonda Holman, one of the editors of the WICHITA EAGLE, wrote the lead editorial "for the editorial board," titled, "Allow Audit of Voting." She brought up some very interesting points. Beth Clarkson, the statistician who has a law suit in process trying to get Kobach to allow an audit to take place, evidently inspired Holman to write her editorial. She had done some homework. She ended the editorial this way:

"Kobach said in April that he'd like every county in Kansas to have a paper trail like those available in Sedgwick County. But surely the point of keeping a record is its availability for later examination. What better way to help confirm what Kobach is always saying, that on his five-year watch Kansas has made it 'easy to vote but hard to

This issue is something that can't be allowed to die and maybe having a group with this ONE MESSAGE, that is, "Verify the Vote," would be the best way to keep the pot stirred up and boiling.

I'm wondering if Jon Simon, the author of the book I've been reading lately, CODE RED, would be the one to lead and spearhead such a group. He's the "Executive Director of "Election Defense Alliance," which I have among my favorites but seldom look at since there's usually not much positive going on there, not much to stir my interest. If there was a single group that would doing things constantly, writing LTEs, contacting people who might be interested in helping out, contacting individuals who would be interested in joining in the drumbeat. There's a Peace and Justice Center in town that might really like to have this as part of its agenda, especially if it were a national project and movement.

Anyway, just an idea, but maybe you and others by giving it some thought and imagining who you could call or work with could come up with ways of getting such a group going. I might try writing to Simon about it.

[Stevepol]

16. By the way,

here's the editorial for July 22 of this year about having an audit of the last Kansas election. Hope it is accessible since they do charge a fee for some of the online access to the paper.

http://www.kansas.com/opinion/editorials/article28060138.html