[ale] OT: Georgia's Invisible Ballots (was Re: Free Showing of "Invisible Ballots" [...])

[aaron]

On Thursday 16 March 2006 16:58, Jim Popovitch wrote:
> While no one can say that electronic voting is 100% secure and valid,

:-) ...and anyone can say that paperless electronic voting systems are 0% 
secure and valid, since there is no evidence to support any form of audit 
that might show otherwise...

> it has also been shown (for decades) that manual voting is full of fraud, 
> much fraud.  There have been cases of paying people to vote, dead people 
> voting, etc.

No one in the patriot movement for legitimate, transparent election systems is 
denying that there have been instances of vote fraud with the elections and 
systems of the past, even with voting systems which provided paper evidence. 
Paper evidence is only one component in the process of conducting secure and 
transparent elections. The historic cases of fraud and failures, including 
Florida 2000, are founded in faulty internal processes or in gross external 
manipulations of counts or procedures. Having physical evidence in the system 
has never been the source of difficulties, though it has always been the key 
to the solutions. To raise conspiracy nut indictments of paper ballot systems 
requires that we overlook at least three key points:

-- The only reason we know about instances of fraud in the past, the only
reason we were able to correct errors and prosecute the perpetrators of
fraud is because the voting systems provided the physical evidence
needed to do so.
    Electronic Invisible Ballot systems, like those of the Diebold monopoly in 
Georgia, provide absolutely no valid audit trail or tangible evidence by 
which we can detect system errors or vote fraud.  I can claim that Georgia's 
2002 election was the most corrupt election in the history of the State and 
no one on the planet has ever had any tangible evidence to refute that claim. 
This is true even if you ignore the fact that, in 2002, every vote in Georgia 
was processed and tabulated by entirely untested, unapproved and uncertified 
software because Diebold installed at least 3 illegal system wide software 
patches prior to delivering their black box touch screen units to the 
precincts.

-- To alter or forge enough physical paper evidence to significantly affect 
the outcome of an election requires a conspiracy in numbers proportionate to 
the totals of legitimate voters or ballots cast.
   Suggesting that the multiple party conspiracies needed to corrupt election 
systems with voter verified paper evidence might be a greater concern than 
the fraud opportunities inherent to invisible ballot computer systems is a 
very long stretch. As anyone with an understanding of basic computer 
technology knows, invisible ballot voting systems, by their nature, 
facilitate undetectable, single point election tampering at _every_ scale of 
election, from a small town mayoral race to a national contest for president. 
Electronic election fraud removes the need for a conspiracy, since any 
election can be controlled by a single unethical programmer or a single 
corrupt voting machine employee or a single foreign terrorist.

-- Since the introduction of the secret ballot, every case of vote fraud has 
been dependent on either breaking the chain of custody between the casting
of the ballots and counting of the ballots, or on direct manipulation of the 
vote counting.
    The example with paper evidence is that ballot boxes must be removed from 
public view to be have their physical contents corrupted or forged. Such 
actions require the collusion of multiple parties, whose deeds are subject to 
discovery by examining the paper evidence.
    With paperless electronic systems, the chain of custody is broken and the 
ballot box is removed from public view the moment the ballot image vanishes 
from the touch screen.  Every subsequent storage, collection and tabulation 
process is under the total control of programmers whose ballot manipulation 
software, as well as all software testing and certification procedures, are 
also hidden from public view. Opportunities to corrupt or forge ballots and 
defraud elections conducted with these systems are nearly infinite and, due 
to the total absence of voter verified transaction evidence, electronic 
ballot tampering can be performed with complete autonomy.
   Providing the guarantees of a secure, transparent chain of custody is the 
reason that all legislation being supported by myself and the Defenders of 
Democracy here in Georgia (specifically SB591 & HB790) requires that all vote 
and audit counting be conducted in the precinct, immediately at the close of 
polls, in full public view.  Producing the election evidence is just the 
first step in transparent elections; insuring that the evidence is properly 
guarded and counted in public is just as critical.    

> [There have been cases of paying people to vote, dead people 
> voting, etc]  (btw, mostly for liberal leaning candidates).

I'm afraid the parenthetical comment, besides lacking justification in 
reality, belies the motives of your comments. Why would you try to spin this 
issue into partisan hate mongering? Why do you hate freedom and democracy?  
;-)

Transparent election processes, like the public counting of the ballots at the 
precinct, encourage active citizen involvement in the process and provide the 
most ideal, reliable form of election security. Citizen involvement in the 
process of democracy also fosters civil dialog and constructive resolution of 
political differences. It is little wonder that the forces which have been 
actively demonizing our government institutions and the fourth estate for so 
many decades would promote and excuse unverifiable election systems which 
instill distrust in our elected officials and generate divisiveness and 
conflict in the electorate.

> The technological solution at least offers means for improvement.

...except in the areas of validating results or enhancing ballot security, 
unless the technology includes audit capability in the form of physical, 
voter verified source documents at the point of the voting transaction.

The challenge is that the constitutional requirements of the secret ballot 
(both Georgia and U.S.) make any of the popular comparisons between voting 
systems and various financial transactions completely invalid and irrelevant.  
Every component of a bank's accounting, security and auditing measures are
entirely dependent upon knowing the identity of the party initiating the 
transaction, which is the one item of information that is unavailable under 
the secret ballot requirement of voting. This is why election auditing 
requires physical documentation verified at the time of the ballot 
transaction.

The requirement of anonymous balloting is a cornerstone of the "Australian 
ballot" system and is a globally accepted, common sense, gold standard 
provision of legitimate elections. Secret balloting provides the two vital 
functions of protecting the voter from intimidation and extortion, while 
simultaneously preventing the voter from selling or otherwise profiting from 
the ballot selections they make.

None of these arguments deny that there are areas where technology can
enhance our election systems, areas like improving accessiblity for the 
disabled, which is perhaps the only constructive argument to justify the 
layers of added logistical complexity and taxpayer costs inherent to touch 
screen voting systems. Computer interfaces can also provide a reliable system 
for instant runoff voting or for reducing common voter errors like overvoting 
and, when a "none of the above" choice is provided, undervoting. It is just 
as undeniable that having these computer aided voting systems produce a
voter verified paper ballot does nothing to interfere with their ability to 
provide these benefits.

The technologies of paperless electronic voting technology have also been 
lauded for providing certain"conveniences" as well, but convenience is not 
the priority or concern of our democracy or of legitimate election processes. 
Yet we find that the installation of these Zero Evidence systems has allowed 
the convenience of the vendors, the convenience of the election officials, 
the convenience of the pollworkers to take precedence over the primary 
concerns of system costs and legitimate, verifiable election results.

[ ======...
> As we have seen recently in Georgia there is a large number of
> people against showing proper ID to vote (even though they have
> to show ID to cash a check at the bank).

Georgia's recent voter ID legislation is an entirely separate issue, but one 
worthy of discussion. I've studied this issue as well and have included some 
facts and thoughts on that sidebar at the end of this conversation.
...====== ] 

(...back on the point, here:)

>  So I say enable technology
> to solve the problems that people themselves can't.  Should we trust
> everyone, No.  But you  have to trust someone, else your life is
> shallow and difficult. ;-)

I agree that the top priority of the voting system is that it be trustworthy, 
but a trustworthy system must first and foremost trust the voter. They, in 
turn, must be able to trust their own senses in knowing that their physical 
ballot not only exists, but that it will be protected and counted with the 
secure oversight of the greater community.

Trust, after all, must be earned, and trust requires a free choice of whom you 
trust. Trust cannot be mandated or forced on people against their will, as 
has happened with the installation of these flawed, proprietary, Zero 
Evidence Diebold election systems in Georgia.  The electronic voting machine 
companies, the professional clubs and system testing organizations they fund 
and the government proponents of paperless election systems, by their obvious 
incompetence in observing the most basic considerations of legitimate 
election processes and failure to follow their own certification rules, have 
clearly failed to earn or deserve anyone's trust.  The conflicts of interest 
introduced by the inordinate complexity and proprietary secrecy surrounding 
Zero Evidence voting systems could not be more antithetical to legitimate 
democracy nor more destructive to the public trust in our election results.

peace
aaron


===== PS: OFF TOPIC -- VOTER ID ====
> As we have seen recently in Georgia there is a large number of
> people against showing proper ID to vote (even though they have
> to show ID to cash a check at the bank).

Georgia's recent voter ID legislation is an entirely separate issue of voter 
disenfranchisement from the systemic problems and disenfranchisement
surrounding Zero Evidence voting.

Georgia's original voter ID law was introduced in 2005 as HB244. After narrow 
passage along partisan lines, the ID provisions of this legislation were 
challenged in Federal court found to be unconstitutional and a violation of 
the Voting Rights Act. A slightly revised version, SB84, was then rushed 
through the 2006 Georgia Assembly in the first few days of the session (in 
order to circumvent opportunities for debate). The updated legislation is 
designed to side step the constitutional conflicts, but attorneys who won the 
case against HB244 point out that the basic "poll tax" issues of cost which 
made HB244 unconstitutional are still present in SB84. Georgia voters can 
expect to pay _another_ $200,000 in legal fees defending this latest 
unconstitutional law before it is thrown out. (A great example of wasteful, 
irresponsible government at work.)

The Georgia bills are part of a nationally coordinated partisan slate of State 
election legislation being introduced around the country, laws that play on 
party preference percentages to selectively harass and disenfranchise voters 
based on their financial resources, ethnic history, seniority, college 
affiliation and disabilities. Various schemes to disenfranchise targeted 
voters along ethnic and class lines were the most common and documented forms 
of vote fraud in the 2000, 2002 and 2004 elections, with the most blatant 
cases being the phony felon rosters manufactured by Georgia Choice Point, 
Inc. for Florida 2000 and the glaring innequities in voting equipment 
distribution in Ohio, 2004.

The real effects of Georgia's voter ID legislation are clearly illustrated by 
the story of Mayor Shirley Franklin's mother, an 84 year old black woman who 
was born in a time when black people were barred by state sanctioned racism 
from access to mainstream medical establishments or hospitals and thus were 
never issued birth certificates.  The only way this tax paying, retired 
teacher of 55 years was able to get a qualifying voter ID, in this case a 
Passport, was through the intervention of her daughter, who luckily happend 
to be the Mayor of Atlanta. State authorities would not recognize Mrs. 
Franklin's life long Georgia residency and career and refused to issue her a 
State ID. The nationally authorized Passport ID cost her $250 and weeks of 
red tape delays.

The insidious intentions of Georgia's voter ID legislation are fully revealed 
by a few simple facts:
-- Cases of falsified voter ID, already a felony offense, are a rare anomaly 
which not only requires significant manipulation of Georgia's comprehensive 
voter registration systems & records, but needs a conspiracy involving 
hundreds or thousands of corrupt individuals to affect a State election. 
There are no documented cases in Georgia's recent history where a person 
voted under false identity.  (Claiming that HB244/SB84 would address vote 
fraud is a vote fraud in and of itself.)
-- The bill accepts Student ID's issued by STATE sanctioned security 
operations on STATE college campuses as acceptable identification, but 
Student ID's issued by STATE sanctioned security operations on other 
campuses, like Moorehouse or Emory or Agnes Scott, are NOT considered 
acceptable voter ID. (? huh ?)
-- Shortly after the passage of HB244, Governor Sonny Perdue closed down many 
of the already sparse count of 56 locations in Georgia where Drivers licenses 
and State ID's could be applied for and obtained. Almost of the closings were 
in rural areas.

As members of the privileged classes in American society that most of us are, 
it is difficult for us to imagine living without cars and drivers licenses 
and checking accounts and credit cards.  From the perspective of our 
fortunate circumstances, we assume that access to this lifestyle is 
accessable to everyone in our nation. But the fact is that there is a large 
portion of our population that continues to suffer, though no fault of their 
own, from the crippling effects of generational poverty, class exploitation 
and state sanctioned racism. Segregated from mainstream institutions, the 
less privileged tend to rely on cash based economies, and if you want ever 
want to see proof of it just walk into a rural Georgia Power office at the 
end of any month and observe the lines of folk paying their electric bill in 
cash, few if any of whom drove a car to get there.

If you favor a national ID for U.S. citizens , then establish and FUND an 
equitable system for issuing or obtaining them instead of threatening the 
constitutionally guaranteed voting rights of all the American citizens who 
have been systematically denied an identity throughout their lives.

The huge corpse of Jim Crow is still rotting down here in Georgia, and these 
fraudulent and unethical voter ID laws are just one more fat, white maggot 
feeding on the remains.

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