[E-voting] Meeting with the Minister/Dept

[Catherine Ansbro]

David,

Good non-partisan sources of information about the voting "situation" in 
the recent USA election are:
www.blackboxvoting.org
www.votersunite.org
http://www.velvetrevolution.us/index.php

(The last one just started one week ago and it looks very good.)

All have current news items.  All post substantiated, well-documented 
information of many kinds of irregularities and inaccuracies in the recent 
election.  It sure makes the current Irish voting system look exemplary 
(PR-STV, paper ballots,counted with plenty of 3rd party observers).  In 
fact I've posted several times on BBV about our current Irish system and 
how good it is.  (So why any Irish government would want to follow the USA 
down a road leading to voting chaos is truly beyond me.)

On the BBV website you can download a free copy of the book Black Box 
Voting by Bev Harris.  Each chapter is a VERY quick download.  In Chapter 2 
there is an excellent list of anecdotes, all of which are referenced in the 
back of the book as well.  (And all the original documentation to 
substantiate each incident is now being uploaded onto the BBV 
website.)  This book is excellent reading to suggest to anyone interested 
in the subject of electronic voting.  It's written in language that anyone 
can understand.  It is passionate, clear and compelling.  (Now how's that 
for a book review.)

BBV focuses on technical forensic auditing relating to the election.  (And 
any of you geeks here are welcome to jump in and help out.)  What they've 
uncovered so far is amazing.  (e.g., original signed poll tapes from the 
counting machines that were being thrown away in black plastic rubbish bags 
even though a FoI request had been filed for them.  All caught on 
film.  And the auditing of the data logs is producing all kinds of 
questions--signs of modem connections to networks that were supposedly 
free-standing, funny numbers of votes getting added in without making any 
sense, incidents of voting machine staff coming to "fix" the computer just 
before a recount, etc.)

The BBV website had problems with repeated hacks from as they started to 
post sensitive documentation.  They had to move everything to an 
ultra-secure server, a process that temporarily delayed getting more files 
uploaded.  Now there will be major additions daily.

On Voters Unite the links to "2004 Elections" and "News" are 
excellent.  (Also the "Mess-up du Jour" is always worth a read.)

As for Ireland--the DoE (civil servants as well as Minister) needs to see 
what they are heading for with the poor system they propose to 
introduce.  Even though touch screens are not proposed for Ireland we'd be 
equally vulnerable here to the staggering range of other problems that 
these websites document.  And that's before we even consider the financial 
impact.  (Upgrades.  "Secure" storage.  Legal challenges.  More legal 
challenges.  Overturned elections.)

Catherine

At 22:09 17/01/2005 +0100, David GLAUDE wrote:
>Is there a place where you do post about the recent events in the USA?
>
>I must admit it is hard to stay informed because of the hudge among of 
>information.
>
>I followed Ohio until say Xmas, but apparently on the 6th January 
>everything was "over".
>
>I have the task of updating Belgium on our web site... but I must 
>translate the information to be reachable in french!!!
>
>This mean that I rather find a "summary" and translate it rather than to 
>send a new story every day (because that was the rate)!!!
>
>I don't think we European need the detail of this or this state in the US. 
>But we need to spread the news that not all went well over there with 
>concreen, even anecdotical information.
>
>David GLAUDE