[E-voting] M.I.T. strategy for internet voting, early voting, voting my mail & voting centers

[Catherine Ansbro]

[posted by JoAnne Karasek at 
http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/show.cgi?tpc=8&post=27654#POST27654]

*M.I.T. strategy for internet voting, early voting, voting my mail & 
voting centers*

My review of --

"Controlling Democracy"
The Principal Agent Problems in Election Administration
by Michael R. Alvarez and Thad E. Hall
http://vote.caltech.edu/journals/PSJ-revised-6-20-06.pdf

This article from the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project is a 
shameful discredit to MIT/Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 
Note--they neither put the authors or Caltech/MIT's name on it.

No joke--they are now recommending trying internet voting, which was 
completely discredited a few years back! [p.28] The voting public 
already knows that is a stupid idea. They also are recommending trying 
voting by mail and early voting, which those who understand voting 
security oppose because there are so many opportunities for error/fraud 
without public supervision of even the chain of custody. Since they 
don't understand voting security, why are they posing as authorities on 
the subject!

Further, they recommend trying vote centers (high population precincts 
inaccessible to large numbers of voters, especially those who are 
minorities and not well-to-do), which involve a voting security problem 
due to the enormous number of people and confusion involved, as well as 
the voting inaccessibility problem.

Internet voting is proposed by them, even though they acknowledge there 
is a potential for fraud, which they ignore by writing, "the odds of 
these security threats occurring are unknown and it is unclear whether 
these threats are more significant than those facing voting methods 
currently used." [p25] Since they don't know the odds of the security 
threats occurring (it probably is 100%) and they don't know whether 
these threats are more significant, why the _ _ _ _ are they 
recommending it!

So why the _ _ _ _ are they recommending it! They are considering the 
problems of election administrators! Never mind the voters--they think 
it is the election administrators that are to be served! The voters are 
just the suckers who pay for all this loss of their vote. Caltech/MIT 
just doesn't want to get it that the election administrators are to 
serve the voters. It appears what Caltech/MIT WANTS IS TO MAKE MONEY ON 
THE ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES.

They should solve the election administrators' problems by getting them 
poll workers (by giving them reasonable shifts of 1 of 3 shifts in the 
voting day, paying poll workers enough to attract them, having an 
election holiday so that public workers and others are available to help 
at the polls, making high school students 16 years and up eligible to be 
poll workers.) They should throw out the overwhelmingly expensive 
electronic voting machines (that are machines so they break down, they 
have software so they are misprogrammed, and software has glitches--we 
don't even have to discuss fraud to know that the electronic voting 
machines should go.)

They aptly name this article "Controlling Democracy". Had they started 
it with a name such as Promoting Democracy or Improving Democracy, they 
might have had a chance of getting it right.

(I reported this all to M.I.T.--it makes them look terrible!)

Jo Anne

Questions--

Why is M.I.T. off the wall on voting issues?

Is M.I.T. cooperating with Republican operatives to push internet 
voting, early voting, voting by mail and voting centers?

J