Thread: VOTE FRAUD: WHAT THEY AREN'T TELLING YOU

Aussies Do It Right: E-Voting - wired.com - nov 2003

While critics in the United States grow more concerned each day about the insecurity of electronic voting machines, Australians designed a system two years ago that addressed and eased most of those concerns: They chose to make the software running their system completely open to public scrutiny.

The workings of our voting machines are kept as secret as possible... I think we should have the right to know everything about them, including the code running them.

Although a private Australian company designed the system, it was based on specifications set by independent election officials, who posted the code on the Internet for all to see and evaluate. What's more, it was accomplished from concept to product in six months. It went through a trial run in a state election in 2001.

Called eVACS, or Electronic Voting and Counting System, the system was created by a company called Software Improvements to run on Linux, an open-source operating system available on the Internet.

Linux is cheaper and more realiable than Microsoft Windows... Also, it's open-source, so any flaws will be fixed more quickly.

The commission posted drafts as well as the finished software code on the Internet for the public to review.

Transparency is always good.

In addition to the public review, the commission hired an independent verification and validation company to audit the code, "specifically to prevent us, as a developer, from having any election-subverting code in there," Quinn said.

Um, that would be nice, don't you think?.. Too bad, we haven't done that here.

Quinn, who was working in Chicago for Motorola during the 2000 presidential election, says he is "gob smacked" by what he sees happening among U.S. electronic voting machine makers, whom he says have too much control over the democratic process.

It has been widely reported that Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems, one of the biggest U.S. voting-machine makers, purposely disabled some of the security features in its software... According to reports the move left a backdoor in the system through which someone could enter and manipulate data... In addition, Walden O'Dell, Diebold Election System's chief executive, is a leading fundraiser for the Republican Party... He stated recently that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.''

"The only possible motive I can see for disabling some of the security mechanisms and features in their system is to be able to rig elections," Quinn said... "It is, at best, bad programming; at worst, the system has been designed to rig an election."

"I can't imagine what it must be like to be an American in the midst of this and watching what's going on," Quinn added... "Democracy is for the voters, not for the companies making the machines.... I would really like to think that when it finally seeps in to the collective American psyche that their sacred Democracy has been so blatantly abused, they will get mad."

The issues of voter-verifiable receipts and secret voting systems could be resolved in the United States by a bill introduced to the House of Representatives last May by Rep. Rush Holt (D-New Jersey). The bill would force voting-machine makers nationwide to provide receipts and make the source code for voting machines open to the public. The bill has 50 co-sponsors so far, all of them Democrats.

This bill was in 2003, and I don't think it passed... But I read somewhere there was a new bill introduced this year... Doesn't anybody know about that?

Quinn, who was working in Chicago for Motorola during the 2000 presidential election, says he is "gob smacked" by what he sees happening among U.S. electronic voting machine makers, whom he says have too much control over the democratic process.

It has been widely reported that Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems, one of the biggest U.S. voting-machine makers, purposely disabled some of the security features in its software... According to reports the move left a backdoor in the system through which someone could enter and manipulate data... In addition, Walden O'Dell, Diebold Election System's chief executive, is a leading fundraiser for the Republican Party... He stated recently that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.''

"The only possible motive I can see for disabling some of the security mechanisms and features in their system is to be able to rig elections," Quinn said... "It is, at best, bad programming; at worst, the system has been designed to rig an election."

"I can't imagine what it must be like to be an American in the midst of this and watching what's going on," Quinn added... "Democracy is for the voters, not for the companies making the machines.... I would really like to think that when it finally seeps in to the collective American psyche that their sacred Democracy has been so blatantly abused, they will get mad.

Well she laid it out pretty convincingly, that it could be done.

I don't care what party it favors we must say no to these machines

While Americans are waking up to these other matters, we can not have them tampering with the vote.