----->>>>> ON 60 Mins. tonight - your VOTE will/ may not be counted as you intented

[deep]

----->>>>> ON 60 Mins. tonight - your VOTE will/ may not be counted as you intented

Is E-Voting Secure?

Oct. 27, 2004


Nearly one third of voters (as many as 45 million people) are expected to cast their ballots electronically in next week's presidential election.

60 Minutes Wednesday correspondent Scott Pelley reports there is a concern that the new paperless voting systems could be vulnerable to software bugs. One expert also tells Pelley that if the software is not properly protected from tampering, it could make e-voting an "electoral weapon of mass destruction." Pelley's report will be broadcast on 60 Minutes Wednesday, Oct. 27, at 8 p.m. ET/PT. One of the 29 states using the new electronic voting is Florida. Charlotte Danciu's father ran for the Palm Beach city council in 2002, the first election that used the new electronic machines. He lost the election, but what upset Danciu even more were the calls she received from voters after Election Day.

"There was this elderly woman on the phone. and she's like, 'Miss Danciu, you don't know me but I kept trying to vote for your dad last night,'" recalls Danciu.

"'I kept pushing his name on the screen and the opponent's name kept registering.' People were calling and telling me that they would touch the screen, and it just wouldn't do anything, and they would call over a poll worker, who would do such things as punch the machine, hit the machine, unplug the machine."

Despite the poll worker's alleged attempts to get the machines to work on election night, Danciu asked for a recount. "The supervisor's position was that, 'Well, when you push this button, the computer will recount,'" says Danciu. "Well, it just re-tabulates and spits out in a nanosecond what it said the nanosecond before. There is no recount. There's no physical evidence to recount."

Without physical evidence, the computer runs the same data through the same software and, therefore, gets the same result every time. "Do people really want to get a different answer?" asks Conny McCormack, who runs elections in Los Angeles County.

"What we saw four years ago in Florida was a recount that was done where people got a different answer, chad fell out and the numbers were different. This shocked people. The recount doesn't match and yet, in electronic, the recount matches and everybody's critical of that."

One of the critics of e-voting security is David Jefferson, California's top technical adviser on computer voting. He calls voting a national security issue and worries about the possibility that a rogue programmer could corrupt the votes in thousands of machines.

"The electoral weapon of mass destruction, if you will, would be if you were able to modify the software at the source where the vendors write it and insert either a bug or some piece of malicious logic that was distributed to every state that used electronic voting machines," says Jefferson.

 

[Jamila]

Thanks for posting this article, deep - it is a REAL issue in the upcoming election that not enough people are taking seriously. (hence the lack of posts so far to your thread).

How fair can this election be called if somehow mysteriously thousands of votes "disappear" due to a "computer glitch" ?

The potential ROBBING of the votes of thousands of Americans is a SERIOUS MATTER and, from what I've read, a lot of these machines have not had their malfunctions sufficiently fixed in time for this election!

That is why I think it's important for international monitoring groups be allowed to observe the fairness of voting in selected areas of the USA - especially in the eight "swing" states.

The Future of American Democracy is at stake!

Here is another article on this same issue:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041014/ap_on_el_ge/e_voting_palm_beach

 

[nbcrusader]

And we think the terror alerts are used for creating mass hysteria?

This is not news. The accusations of potential problems have been around for a long time. And that is all we have, a "sky is falling" cry that things may go wrong. (And guess who will be crying loudest if the election does not go their way - just count the lawyers already hired)

It is amazing that all those who bitched and moaned about the use of paper ballots in the last election are now MIA and we have a new round of pre-emptive strike of doubt regarding the results.

We are getting exactly what we asked for - electronic voting. No one stopped to think that this might actually be worse than paper voting.

 

[kobayashi]

for this story, 60 minutes tried to come to an ontario town (i think it was barrie) who have previously employed diebold voting systems in an effort to put them through the ringer.

the town council had no problem with it until diebold stepped in and threatened them with legal action if the news crew were allowed unfettered access to the machines.

at least i assume this was the story 60 minutes was working on. this incident made the canadian press a couple of weeks ago.

 

[Jamila]

The possible robbing Americans of their votes is not hysteria - it's democracy in its truest form.

It's interesting how those in this forum who supposedly stand up for democracy in "the war on terrorism" have little concern when the democratic process in our country continues to be threatened and undermined by ignoring the threats to the popular vote of Americans.

I guess if you can't win the popular vote honestly, let's just steal another election electronically....

 

[Jamila]

Correction: the concern regarding robbing Americans of their votes is democracy in its truest form.

I guess I had "the other side" in this debate on my mind when I wrote that!

 

[nbcrusader]

The possible robbing Americans of their votes is not hysteria - it's democracy in its truest form.

It's interesting how those in this forum who supposedly stand up for democracy in "the war on terrorism" have little concern when the democratic process in our country continues to be threatened and undermined by ignoring the threats to the popular vote of Americans.

I guess if you can't win the popular vote honestly, let's just steal another election electronically....

Oh please. No need to get melodramatic.

This is all hyperbole and scare tactics. There is no evidence that one side has the ability or intention of "stealing the election electronically".

 

[verte76]

I hope we are spared the horror of another Florida. I suppose it's natural for people to be pressing panic buttons.

 

[diamond]

if Deep, Verte and Sharky went to Florida to Vote

http://www.boomchicago.nl/images/Voting_Machine.mov

This is the scenerio if Deep, Verte and Sharky decided to take a bus to Florida and vote.
Click link.

db9

 

[Liesje]

I guess if you can't win the popular vote honestly, let's just steal another election electronically....

So the democrats are the only ones that vote electronically and the republicans intentionally "break" the machines? Sorry, but that's a pretty dumb conjecture....I'm hoping I misinterpreted.....