Google Tech Talks
December, 7 2007
As a result of Florida 2000, some people concluded that paper ballots
simply couldn't be counted, even though businesses, banks, racetracks,
lottery systems, and other entities in our society count and deal with
paper all the time. Instead, paperless computerized voting systems
(Direct Recording Electronic or DREs) were touted as the solution to
"the Florida problem."
Election officials were told that DREs in the long run would be
cheaper than alternative voting systems, a claim that ignored the
costs of testing and secure storage, as well as very expensive annual
maintenance contracts. They were told that DREs had been extensively
tested and that the certification process guaranteed that the machines
were reliable and secure. They were also told that DREs would allow
people with disabilities to vote independently. In some cases
officials were threatened with lawsuits or actually sued by certain
disability rights groups if they expressed hesitation at purchasing
DREs.
However, recent results from California's "Top-to-Bottom Review" have
revealed that the DREs that were tested -- all of which had been
federally qualified and state certified -- are poorly designed, badly
programmed, insecure, unreliable, and at times impossible for people
with disabilities to use. As a result the California Secretary of
State Debra Bowen decertified all of the tested systems. While she
recertified them, her conditional recertification orders, which
contain long lists of detected problems, have still longer lists of
conditions, some quite arduous, that must be met if the machines are
to be used in the upcoming primary election.
We will examine some of the technical issues relating to DREs and
Internet voting, discuss the advantages of optical scan + ballot
marking systems, review some horror stories, and discuss ongoing
legislative efforts aimed at making voting systems more secure and
mandating random manual audits for all federal elections.
Speaker: Barbara Simons
An expert on electronic voting, Barbara Simons was a member of the National Workshop on Internet Voting that was convened at the request of President Clinton in 2001. She participated on the Security Peer Review Group for the US Department of Defense's Internet voting project (SERVE) and co-authored the report that led to the cancellation of SERVE because of security concerns. Simons also co-chaired ACM's study of statewide databases of registered voters. Simons and Doug Jones are co-authoring a book on voting machines to be published by PoliPoint.
Simons was President of ACM from July 1998 until June 2000. She founded ACM's US Public Policy Committee (USACM) in 1993 and served for many years as the Chair or co-Chair of USACM. In 2005 Simons became the first woman to receive the Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award from the College of Engineering of U.C. Berkeley. She is also a Fellow of ACM and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She received the Alumnus of the Year Award from the Berkeley Computer Science Department, the Distinguished Service Award from Computing Research Association, the Norbert Wiener Award from Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, the Outstanding Contribution Award from ACM, and the Pioneer Award from EFF.
She is on the Board of Directors of VerifiedVoting.org, Public Knowledge, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, as well as the Advisory Board of the Oxford Internet Institute. She has testified before both the U.S. and the California legislatures and at government sponsored hearings.
Simons earned her Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley. In 1980, she became a Research Staff Member at IBM's San Jose Research Center (now Almaden). In 1992, she joined IBM's Applications Development Technology Institute as a Senior Programmer and subsequently served as Senior Technology Advisor for IBM Global Services. She is retired from IBM.
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@z2design The NY Times (hardly the bastion of conservative activism) along with a bunch of other news organizations did their own analysis and reported that Bush would have won, even if the full state recount had be performed.
Read their report here: nyti.ms(slash)9h5aWq
tgoyer 1 year ago
excellent work!
1888junkteam 2 years ago
America is silly. In the 2000 election, every major news company had a reporter at every ballot counting facility in Florida. When the reports were reported in, every news company did their own math and Gore won. Then fox news announced Bush won, and the person in charge of officially announcing the vote said Bush won. Bush went to the supreme court and halted the state required recount. Your vote never counted. Wheather a machine or a human counted.
z2design 3 years ago
The criticism of cryptographic (E2E) voting systems here seems completely spurious. In fact, they are VASTLY EASIER to audit than ordinary paper ballots.
True, it is more difficult for the average person to understand why E2E audits prove the integrity of the tally, but that problem is totally mitigated by the fact that we don't have to trust clueless election officials to perform the audit.
For more information, see Ben Adida's Google tech talk (v=ZDnShu5V99s).
topnerd 3 years ago
Diebold hard at work stealing votes and giving them to these warmongers!!!! Go Ron Paul!!!!!!
savonn06 4 years ago
The bottom line is our vote doesn't count. Until WE, THE PEOPLE, demand honest and fair HAND COUNTING? With INDEPENDENT counters. Of all race and Party's? Our election system is flawed and criminal. Don't take my word. Watch the New Hampshire Primary recount videos. Many illegal actions from the Secretary of State. I'm ashamed to be an American. After watching New Hampshire's appalling recount.
HeymanUSS 4 years ago
They're mostly all (if not totally) implemented on MS Windows... 'nuff said.
cstubing 4 years ago
This comes down to the struggle between good and evil! Yin and Yang!! Keith and Mick!
dianeliebowitz 4 years ago
What does that tell you?? That they want to sell you honest machines??? NO they want to sell you crooked machines!!!
dianeliebowitz 4 years ago
"COnvaluted"??? NO! It's called Tied Tight!
Yes dishonest!!! CROOKED!
dianeliebowitz 4 years ago