This week, the http://www.times-standard.com">Eureka Times-Standard has published a guest opinion column I wrote. It carries more than just the message that my community group, the Voter Confidence Committee, is building a campaign for hand-counted paper ballots. It goes beyond reporting highlights from Secretary of State Debra Bowen's Top To Bottom Review. This column holds the T-S accountable for false and misleading reporting on these matters. I've posted the entire piece below.
But before I get to that, I also have a letter to the editor in this week's issue of the Journal. Their recent coverage has been much better, and I told them so. The full text of that appears beneath the T-S column.
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But before I get to that, I also have a letter to the editor in this week's issue of the Journal. Their recent coverage has been much better, and I told them so. The full text of that appears beneath the T-S column.
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Eureka Times-Standard
Collective amnesia about e-voting safety
Dave Berman
Article Launched: 08/16/2007 04:15:49 AM PDTElection conditions have figured prominently in recent news, thanks in part to a technical review of the state's voting systems conducted by California Secretary of State Debra Bowen. Bowen's "Red Teams" of computer security experts compromised the security of every system tested, including Diebold and Hart InterCivic equipment used in Humboldt County. The Times-Standard's coverage of this topic deserves serious scrutiny.
On July 28, the T-S ran this headline [on the Web]: "Local election systems may be vulnerable to hackers." This was the first paragraph: "A team of University of California computer scientists were able to hack into several voting systems used by California counties, including the two systems currently used in Humboldt County, the secretary of state announced Friday."
When clearly reporting that election systems are vulnerable ("were able to hack"), why does the T-S headline say they may be vulnerable? [Editor's note: The headline in the print edition said, "Election systems at risk of hacking."]
The T-S quotes Humboldt Registrar of Voters Carolyn Crnich being dismissive of these results, and in a manner extraordinarily similar to corporate propaganda defensively spun by "voting machine" vendors. This phenomenon is afflicting registrars throughout the state. They want the public to believe some new precautions can offset the machines' systemic design flaws.
In a report found on the secretary's website, Bowen's Diebold Source Code Review Team wrote: "Improvements to existing procedures may mitigate some threats in part, but others would be difficult, if not impossible, to remedy procedurally. Consequently, we conclude that the safest way to repair the Diebold system is to reengineer it so that it is secure by design."
On Aug. 7, the T-S presented another distortion: "E-voting order may have little impact here." While I may not think Secretary Bowen went far enough in defining new certification conditions, it is definitely a good thing that she has banned modems from transmitting precinct results to election department headquarters. Memory cards from all precincts will now have to be physically delivered to central HQ, and announcing results on election night may no longer be possible. Little impact?
On Aug. 8, the T-S again created a false impression with the headline: "County election system fares well in review." This headline contradicts previous T-S reporting as well as the facts.
This same article also congratulates the registrar for previously choosing optical scanners over touch screen machines, both of which "count" votes in secret. The T-S is correct to place a premium on paper ballots. But the methods of casting and counting votes must be evaluated separately. Lauding this decision is like feting Ford for new seat belts in response to exploding Pintos.
Why is the T-S shaping news this way, without even a balancing view from within the community? How can the registrar defend previously discredited equipment now again debunked? How could recent test results have strengthened her resolve to use Diebold's optical scanners? Why does the registrar choose to align herself with a company that employs convicted computer fraudsters and faces multiple class action lawsuits from investors, rather than with results of legitimate state-sponsored academic university studies?
Humboldt County's Voter Confidence Committee recently completed an eight-month study and published a "Report on Election Conditions in Humboldt County, California." Over the past several years, Humboldt media have documented numerous breakdowns of "voting machines." Yet somehow, word on the street seems to be that we have never had any problems here. Is there any wonder where such confusion comes from?
Regardless, this report is both an antidote for collective amnesia, and a blueprint for community involvement needed to make our elections transparent, secure, and verifiably accurate. The VCC has developed a spreadsheet tool for creating labor, cost and time estimates for an all hand-counted election. Using the VCC spreadsheet tool, The Journal's Hank Sims "twiddled" with the numbers and found hand-counting "wouldn't be all that time-consuming or costly" ("Town Dandy," Aug. 2).
Publicly counting votes by hand involves the community in its democracy and makes elections a citizen-owned endeavor. The media witnessing and documenting the process would establish the credibility of the reported results.
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