{"id":956,"date":"2006-01-03T15:21:10","date_gmt":"2006-01-03T15:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:09:31","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:09:31","slug":"stalin_it_is_no","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=956","title":{"rendered":"Stalin: “It is not the votes that count, but who counts the votes.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve blogged for a while about voting machines and my concern about the mechanics of our democracy. The issue is best expressed to me by Tom Stoppard’s great quote from ‘Jumpers<\/a>‘:<\/p>\n

George: Furthermore, I had a vote.<\/p>\n

\nDotty: It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting, Archie says.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Which is, of course, a rehash of Josef Stalin’s insight: <\/p>\n

“It is not the votes that count, but who counts the votes.” <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Today the L.A. Times had an article on voting machines<\/a>, and it descends into a fine, Patterico-worthy<\/a>, mess.The article opens:<\/p>\n

Five years after the vote-counting debacle in Florida suspended the election of a new U.S. president, California and other states are embroiled in a contentious debate over how voters should cast their ballots.<\/p>\n

\nThe maligned punch cards that snarled the 2000 count are all but gone. But with electronic machines under attack as unreliable and vulnerable to hackers, there is little consensus about what the new technology should look like.<\/p>\n

\nThat has left many counties nationwide in turmoil as they struggle with unproven technology while state regulations remain in flux and the federal government offers minimal guidance.<\/p>\n

\nIn some places, voters are facing their third balloting system in five years.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Note that the story simply states the claims that the systems are unreliable and vulnerable to hackers…classic “he said, she said” journalism.<\/p>\n

The problem is that the vulnerabilities are real, well documented, and put forth by serious people whose claims have not been meaningfully refuted. The article just flat skips over this point…bad writing, or bad editing?<\/p>\n

Adding to the difficulties was the unexpected emergence of security as a central issue in the modernization debate.<\/p>\n

\nSoon after 2000, a cadre of activists and computer scientists began raising alarms that electronic systems could be breached by hackers who could change election results with just a few keystrokes.<\/p>\n

\nCritics focused much attention and suspicion on Ohio-based Diebold, the industry leader, whose chief executive had written in a fundraising letter that he was committed to helping President Bush carry Ohio in 2004.<\/p>\n

\nMany elections officials and manufacturers initially dismissed the activists, arguing that the new systems were more reliable and tamper-proof.<\/p>\n

\n“There was a level of trust with vendors, who said, ‘Don’t worry; it’s a computer,’ ” said Pam Smith, nationwide coordinator for the Verified Voting Foundation, one of several advocacy groups.<\/p>\n

\n“It would have been good for people to recognize that these were computers. And as such, they were subject to all the glitches and errors and vulnerabilities,”<\/p>\n

\nTo date, there has been no verified tampering with an electronic voting system during an election. But the controversy has had an effect.<\/p>\n

\nTwo years ago, California’s then-secretary of state, Democrat Kevin Shelley, announced that electronic voting machines would be required to produce a paper record of each vote. Today, more than half the states require such records, according to Verified Voting.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It would have taken the reporter – Noam Levey – about an hour with Google to find reputable computer scientists who have legitimate, profound concerns about the state of voting machine technology, as well as a core set of concrete recommendations about how to fix them.<\/p>\n

Take Avi Rubin<\/a>, of Johns Hopkins (pdf).<\/p>\n

Or Douglas Jones<\/a> from the University of Iowa.<\/p>\n

Or Bruce Schneier<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I could go on, but breakfast is waiting…<\/p>\n

There’s an interesting post on what this shows about the media in general, but I’ll leave that for Jeff Jarvis<\/a>. There’s an interesting post on what this shows about the Times, but I’ll leave that for Patrick.<\/p>\n

The real issue here is that the Times has laid out the problem with e-voting as though it was a simple issue of diligent government workers facing competing interests, rather than making any effort to dig into the facts.<\/p>\n

I do computer stuff for a living, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that no business accounting system with the kind of vulnerabilities documented in a variety of e-voting systems – not just Diebold – could be used for corporate finance or controls, because the officers involved would have major liabilities under Sarbanes-Oxley. <\/p>\n

And we want to run our country with this stuff?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Armed Liberal looks at a L.A. Times article on e-voting and and takes the negative …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}