GEORGIA'S VOTING SYSTEM
Georgia now has statewide electronic voting. Diebold
provides the entire e-voting system used in Georgia, both the
hardware and the vote tabulating software. The system has numerous
apparent advantages; it is very easy to use, the vote tabulation
is easy, votes are tabulated very rapidly with the results known
shortly after the polls close, it is easy for the poll workers to
set up and use, etc..
Despite all the advantages there
are many of us who believe the system is seriously flawed and
makes voting fraud easier than it has ever been. Most of us who
are concerned with the potential for fraud have that concern
because we have also had years of experience creating software and
working with computers. After the last election we were assured
that there could have been no fraud because there was no
noticeable undercount or overcount. Were this not serious business
we would have had a good laugh at that explanation.
Most of today's voters use
computers at home and at work. They use the Internet and run
various software applications to keep records, handle
correspondence, work with photography, and innumerable other
tasks. The computer is a faithful servant that does their bidding
and never makes mistakes with arithmetic. But at best, they have
only a very limited understanding of what goes on inside the
computer. It is something of a magic box and when something
doesn't work as it should they find an expert to fix it. From
their viewpoint, there is no reason to be suspicious of e-voting.
Those of us who see the potential for massive vote fraud find that
most people's eyes glaze over at about 30 seconds into the
somewhat technical explanation of the fraud potential. In an
attempt to provide an understandable delineation of the problem
the basic concerns are illustrated in the fable that follows.
A FABLE FOR THE GEORGIA e-VOTER
Long, long ago in a land far, far away a new form of government
arose. The populace of that land, tired of being oppressed by
kings and royalty, threw out their rulers and established
democracy. They elected both legislators and the chief executive.
As would naturally occur, political parties arose and in time two
parties became dominant, the Reds and the Blues. The land greatly
prospered and soon became the envy of all the surrounding
monarchies. Occasionally a charlatan would be elected to some
office but he was usually thrown out at the next election. There
were differences in the parties, the Reds wanted to rule with
absolute power, the Blues wished to govern with minimal power and
in everyone's interest. Usually, neither party controlled the
entire government as each was a check on the other.
Reds and Blues agreed on one thing,
elections were tedious affairs and had numerous small problems.
The clay ballots were easily broken, the stylus for marking the
clay could get lost or wear out. Elections were labor intensive
and there was always a shortage of volunteers who could count. But
the results of the elections usually reflected the will of the
populace.
Now there were wizards in those
days who did marvelous things, such as inventing indoor plumbing.
There were both Red and Blue wizards, the Red wizards usually
concentrated on inventing better weapons, the Blue wizards
invented things like medicines and fertilizer and reclining
chairs. Finally, one of the Red wizards invented a vastly improved
method of voting.
This new voting method was
marvelous in its simplicity and ease of use. When the voter went
into the polling place he found a token dispenser and a box with a
slot in the top on a table for each race being contested. The
voter could choose a red token or a blue token from the dispenser,
but could only take one token for each race. The token was dropped
in the slot on the box and the voter moved to the table for the
next race. This was so much easier than the old system. And, to
make things easier for everyone, the Red wizard handled the whole
election process, providing the tokens, counting the tokens for
each race, and tabulating all the returns. In fact, since the Red
wizard's invention was proprietary, he refused to allow the local
election officials access to either the tokens, the ballot boxes,
or the Big Counting Room (BCR), where the tabulation took place.
When the new system was adopted a
strange shift occurred in the political makeup of the land. Where
the Reds or Blues had rarely controlled everything for a complete
election cycle, now the Reds won control of all branches of
government. With each election cycle the Reds retained power
although they never won all the races or even a large legislative
majority, just enough to maintain power. People thought it strange
that exit polls, which had always been an accurate indicator of an
election outcome, were now often wrong, sometimes showing Blues
with a big win in a race that was won by the Reds.
One brave young woman became
suspicious of the Red wizard's invention. Bev managed to disguise
herself as one of the Red wizard's apprentices, the only people
let into the BCR. Bev watched carefully as the ballot boxes and
token dispensers were distributed to the Red apprentices for
counting and tabulation. She observed that those counting the
votes for certain important races had two extra boxes on their
tables, one marked R-to-B and the other B-to-R.
The counting and tabulating process
then started. And it was astonishing in its simplicity. The
apprentices removed the tokens from the ballot boxes and sorted
them into Red and Blue stacks. At the tables where the important
race votes were counted the Red wizard's apprentice simply
tabulated the results when the Red token stack was higher than the
Blue stack. But where The Blue stack was larger than the Red stack
the apprentice switched enough votes to make the Red stack taller
and give the race to the Red candidate.
The switch was simple, the
apprentice removed enough tokens from the Blue stack so that when
added to the Red stack it would be the winner. These Blue tokens
were then put into the B-to-R box and the box was shaken. When
removed, the formerly Blue tokens were now Red and were added to
the Red stack. The apprentice then removed the same number of Red
tokens from the dispenser, placed them in the R-to-B box, shook
it, removed the now Blue tokens and inserted them back into the
Blue section of the token dispenser.
When the process was completed the
tabulated results, token dispensers, and ballot boxes were
presented to the Election Board, which had no access to the big
counting room since it was the Red wizard's intellectual property.
Bev had been horrified by the ease
with which elections were stolen. She complained to the Election
Board and while they agreed to a recount they would not agree to a
complete examination of the Red wizard's voting system because
they respected his intellectual property rights. The recount, of
course agreed perfectly with the tabulated results. As further
proof of the accuracy of the system the tokens remaining in the
dispenser for each race were counted and they also agreed with the
tabulation.
Poor Bev tried to make the Election
Board understand that the token colors had been switched by the
magic boxes. The Board concluded that magic boxes that could
change the color of tokens were not part of the system and
therefore Bev was delusional.
After the Reds had been in power
for a few decades they, in a surprise win of a referendum, became
the permanent rulers and dispensed with elections. Fascism
resulted and shortly afterward the land disappeared as a society,
along with its indoor plumbing. End of Fable.
TODAY'S ELECTRONIC VOTING
SYSTEMS
Fast forward to the early 21st century. The wizards have
disappeared and the United States is the world's oldest surviving
democracy. But the wizards have been replaced by many other
technological marvels and the entrepreneurs that sell them. The
wizard's apprentices have been replaced by the software writers
that work for the entrepreneurs that sell things like voting
systems. And while we no longer have magic boxes that can change
the color of tokens switching votes with software is much easier
and faster.
There are literally thousands of
methods that can be incorporated in the voting software that can
do the same sort of vote switching as told in the fable. As with
the fable, there is no record left for election officials that
would indicate the switch has occurred.
Georgia now uses an e-vote system
supplied by Diebold. This particular system is wide open to vote
switching from its software, it is readily hacked, and in mid 2005
there is no one responsible to the State that knows precisely how
the system works. Diebold claims that their software is
proprietary as is much of the hardware. And the system has no
audit trail that would allow election officials to catch
fraudulent vote switching.
A number of states have passed laws
requiring an independent audit capability. The web is full of
references concerning e-voting. I would suggest that everyone
interested in preventing the republicans from stealing another
election start with VerifiedVoting.org,
BlackBoxVoting .org,
and the various demonstrations Bev
Harris has used to show how easily votes can be switched
without leaving a trace. Especially pertinent is the one using one
of the machines used by Cobb County.
REQUIRED CHANGES
In order to prevent widespread election theft the State of Georgia
needs to make many improvements over the current system used.
Among the necessary changes are:
-
Provide a verifiable audit
trail, usually a voter verified paper record, of all votes
cast.
-
Require a hand count of a
certain percentage of all votes cast at each precinct.
-
Require the voting machine
vendors to provide the State with the source code for all
vendor supplied software. The source code and executable code
compiled from it will become the property of the state.
-
Have teams of software experts
from at least Georgia Tech and University of Georgia perform a
line by line examination of all software source code used in
the system.
-
Require vendors to provide
complete details of all hardware used in the system.
-
Have computer experts from the
two universities examine random samples of the machines used
to make sure they don't include any "magic boxes".
Yes, it is possible to switch votes with hardware.
-
Install only software that has
been compiled from the examined source code that is the
property of the State.
-
Do not allow vendors access to
the machines at any time after they are purchased.
HAZARDS OF NOT CHANGING
If the current system remains in use without the necessary changes
we can look forward to a long period of republican rule in
Georgia. It won't matter how good the democratic candidates are,
how well their campaigns are run, or by what margin they lead in
the pre-election polls. The republicans will always win the
important races and stay in control.
Several democrats have told me that
democrats should not make the voting system an issue because it
might hurt Ms. Cox's campaign
for governor. While replacing Perdue
with Cox would be delightful it is also highly improbable with the
current voting system.
If you don't think this type of
election fraud is possible take a careful look at the Cleland/Chambliss
race for the Senate.
