Gone In 60 Seconds: Why I'm Voting Absentee
This Fall
by Lee H. Goldberg
This November, I'll be voting by absentee ballot even though I don't have any travel plans. That's because my county government has still not added a printed hardcopy capability to our electronic voting machines and I want to make sure my vote is actually recorded. I suggest that you, your friends and your family do the same because from what I can tell it's the only way you can be sure your vote will be properly counted.
Even if you don't believe the recent revelations that an official from the Diebold Corporation publicly admitted to alterations of the software in 5000 of their machines on the day of the Georgia's 2002 elections, it's pretty obvious that our electoral system is wide open and vulnerable to invasion -- something that's as big (or bigger) a threat to our nation as any security breach at our borders. And if you don't believe me, spend a few minutes watching the short video that accompanies the report Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine by Dr Ed Felten, Professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs at Princeton University. The work that Dr. Felten and his team have done dispels any notion that we can take the integrity of our voting system for granted. Their extensively researched and well-documented report exposes some unsettling and irrefutable problems with the electronic voting technology that we rely on for virtually all of our elections.
Although you really should read the 24-page report in its entirety, to get all the facts, just watching the short video shows several ways that a Diebold voting machine can be quickly (usually under 1 minute) and undetectably hacked to produce whatever results you want: a very sobering experience.
Several credible organizations like Black Box Voting have already published some excellent reports on the security flaws in all major brands of e-voting machines, and speculated their contribution to possible irregularities in the 2004 elections. But the Princeton study's rigorous and non-political approach to studying the mechanical and electronic loopholes that enable undetectable vote tampering moves the debate beyond any question of partisan politics and clearly points out the time bomb lying at the heart of our democracy.
From everything I've been able to read, about the only way to ensure that our elections actually reflect the voter's choice is requiring the addition of hardcopy capability to all electronic voting machines used to elect any office higher than City Dog Catcher. Fortunately, this is a relatively inexpensive one-time upgrade to many machines already on the market. For those machines which cannot be upgraded, they need to be scrapped and replaced, along with the vendors who sold them.
Although a hybrid electronic/paper ballot is not totally immune to deliberate or accidental tampering, it offers a combination of speed and traceability that neither system can offer by itself. A recent study of the how verifiable electronic machines (supplied by Diebold) worked during the 2006 Cuyahoga County, Ohio elections gives them a mixed, but mostly positive, review. Prepared by the non-partisan Election Science Institute, the study provides some good insights on what works, and what needs to be fixed in the next generation of systems. Professor Felten also provides some interesting commentary on this report and other related topics on his eclectic blog at Freedom to Tinker.
It's a free country (at least for the moment), so I cannot tell you what to do, but I'd suggest that defending our voting rights should be one of your priorities for this fall. At minimum, stopping by your town hall or county courthouse and picking up an absentee ballot to use will ensure your vote is actually counted and, if enough of us choose paper over electronic, maybe our elected officials will take notice. If you have a bit more free time, you might want to consider either getting active with a voting rights group such as Black Box Voting, Vote Trust USA, or Democracy Watch.
You can also take direct action by actually getting involved with the electoral process as a poll worker or poll watcher. Besides filing my absentee ballot, I'll be taking off Election Day to volunteer as a poll worker at one of the polling places in my area. It will be a privilege to spend the day helping ensure we have a smooth and un-tampered election, and to meet the other concerned citizens of all political stripes who take our democracy seriously enough to volunteer their time.
If you're interested in doing the same, you can either inquire with your local board of elections to volunteer as a non-partisan poll worker, or contact the political party of your choice (Red, Blue, or Chartreuse for all I care) to act as a poll watcher. You can also sign up through the Poll Workers for Democracy Project web site without ever leaving the comfort of your computer chair.
Unless all our electronic voting machines are able to produce printed receipts that permit positive verification, an election can be "gone in 60 seconds." As technologists who understand the technical issues better than most citizens, it's up to us to sound the alarm, take action, and protect the country we love. After all, if we're willing to spend billions of dollars and thousands of lives to ensure free and fair elections overseas, shouldn't we exercise the same vigilance to ensure we have them at home?
Comments? Questions? Speculations on what really went on in the 2004 election? Write me at: lgoldberg@green-electronics.com
Addendum - 20 November 2006
Reader Alex Weir responds in this greenTECHZONE guest column with the outlines of a cell-phone based system being used in developing nations to safeguard against vote fraud.
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