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Dear EuronaCUEE subscriber,
The following headline recently appeared as a POLITICKER
HEADLINE in
the online newsletter The Politicker:
-----------------------------------------
NATIONAL NEWS
CALIFORNIA GAINS OPPORTUNITY TO TEST OUT REMOTE
INTERNET VOTING
CALIFORNIA GETS OPPORTUNITY TO TEST NEW VOTING
TECHNOLOGIES
(LA Times) A federal judge in Los Angeles on
Wednesday ruled that
California has to replace outmoded punch-card
voting machines by the
2004 presidential election.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-000011395feb14.story?coll=la-headlines-cali\
fornia
Here's a copy of the e-mail I subsequently sent to
the newsletter:
Dear Politicker,
I was shocked to read the above headline in the
latest issue of
Politicker, which I just received, since, despite
my own best efforts
since 1996, there has been exactly one real-world
test of ?remote
Internet voting? so far, the Democratic primary in
Arizona in March of
2000 (the existence of which I personally
facilitated) and, again
despite my intensive efforts, in this case to
convince the FEC and the
Office of the Secretary of State of California to
do so, neither these
nor any other electoral body of competent
authority has been willing,
not to certify a remote Internet voting system, but
even to specify
the criteria according to which one MIGHT be
certified for use.
As you’ll see in the attached document, built
around a broadcast
exchange between me and Connie McCormack,
Registrar-Recorder of Los
Angeles County, while Judge Wilson’s recent
decision ordering nine
California counties to replace their antiquated
punch card systems
with newer and better voting systems might seem to
be the perfect
occasion to introduce remote Internet voting into
the mix, especially
since these counties don’t really have the money
to buy the expensive
DRE/touch screen systems that would satisfy Judge
Wilson’s criteria,
that’s not what’s going to happen, unless we act
now.
I’ll let you read the document, which explains all
this. But I want
to make the point that your headline, while fun to
contemplate, is
extremely misleading and untrue.
A more accurate headline would be “California On
Brink of Losing
Opportunity to Test (and Use) Remote Internet Voting.”
It’s hard enough to make the arguments necessary
to persuade citizens
and policy-makers that secure remote Internet
voting is feasible,
viable, cost-effective, worthwhile, and
inevitable. But it becomes
harder and much more confusing if the very Net
media we all depend
upon for timely, accurate coverage of this issue
don’t make the effort
necessary to carefully distinguish between
“Internet voting,” which
now has come to mean putting computers in polling
places and
connecting them to electoral servers, and “remote
Internet voting,”
which is what, until recently, I called “Internet
voting,” and which
refers to allowing people to vote securely over
the Internet from
competent electronic devices anywhere, anytime
within the designated
election time frame.
For the classic formulation of “remote Internet
voting” (formerly
”Internet voting”), please see the attached copy
of the Virtual Voting
Rights Initiative, which I wrote and circulated
six years ago, in 1996.
For a more contemporary effort to convince the two
leading candidates
to replace Bill Jones, who as California’s
incumbent Secretary of
State over the last eight years has single
handedly done more to block
(remote) Internet voting in California and
nationally than anyone
else, please take a look at the attached copy of
an e-mail I sent
earlier this week to both Kevin Shelley and
Michela Alioto. Since one
of them is likely to be the next Secretary of
State, I’m trying, with
these letters and in other ways, to lay the
groundwork to convince
whomever does become the next Secretary of State
that ?remote Internet
voting? is a viable option as part of the solution
to the state’s
electoral problems.
You can, if you like, consider all this material a
submission from me
as a NetPulse Contributing Editor from California. I hope you can
sift through all this material and use some of it
in the next issue of
NetPulse. I could, if you like, do the sifting
myself and produce a
Soundoff or other extended piece dealing with the
current state of
”secure remote Internet voting” in California and
elsewhere.
In fact, why not start up a separate newsletter
just to cover
”Internet voting” and “remote Internet voting” and
any additional
permutations that arise as the transition of
elections into cyberspace
continues to evolve?
Let me know as soon as you can. Before “remote
Internet voting” can
change everything, it seems that everything must
be changed first. It
should be exciting to watch.
Using Internet Voting to Save California from
Electoral Disaster
Thanks to the ACLU and Common Cause, and U.S.
District Judge Stephen
V. Wilson, we now have a tremendous opportunity to
achieve the
implementation of remote Internet voting by March,
2004.
February 14,
2002
State Ordered to Replace Old Vote Machines
Ruling: Los Angeles and eight other large counties must update
equipment by the 2004 presidential election,
federal judge decides.
By HENRY WEINSTEIN, TIMES STAFF WRITER
A federal judge in Los Angeles on Wednesday ruled that California has
to replace outmoded punch-card voting machines by
the 2004
presidential election.
U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson's decision
is the first ruling
in the nation requiring the elimination of
obsolete voting machines in
the aftermath of the controversial 2000
presidential election. Similar
suits are pending in a number of other states.
For the entire article, go to:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-000011395feb14.story?coll=la-headlines-cali\
fornia
Nine days after the Federal court’ s decision, the
Registrar-Recorder
of Los Angeles County, Connie McCormack, appeared
as a guest on “Talk
of the City,” hosted by Kitty Felde on KPCC 89.3
FM, a National Public
Radio station broadcasting
from Pasadena City College. I gave them a
call.
Caller:
Thanks for taking my call.
Host:
Sure.
Caller:
I wanted to compliment the Registrar and let
everyone know that when
you have a highly-trained and conscientious and
non-partisan staff,
you can get good results with punch cards, which
wasn’t the case in
Florida because most of those factors weren’t present.
What I’d like to say is that everything you’ve
been saying tells me
what we need to do is have Internet voting, both
in the polling places
and from remote locations in people’s homes.
Elderly people are happy
to use new technology. We’ve had a call-in from a
disabled person who
says it’s embarrassing and troublesome and
difficult to get to vote.
All of these problems are solved if people can
vote from home over the
Internet in a secure way. And the last caller but
one said, “The
whole state is voting electronically.” Well, to do
that, you need to
let people vote over the Internet, and I think
that would be a great
idea if we could do that and I think it could be
put into place at a
cost and at a speed that would satisfy all the
legal requirements that
are now facing you.
Host:
Well, Connie McCormack, what’s the latest on
Internet voting?
Guest:
You know, everything you’re saying, it just sounds
so right and it
really does until….There was an Internet Task
Force of the top
experts that the Secretary of State put together
who came in on their
first meeting, all these techies saying, “We can
do this” and left
eight months later saying, “We absolutely cannot.”
The issues become
security and if you can hack into the Pentagon and
all these other
companies? sites the problem of security is not
solvable at this time
according to the experts.
Note:
For the entire California Internet Voting Task
Force report, released
on January 18, 2000, go to:
http://www.ss.ca.gov/executive/ivote/
I personally don’t know of any “techies” who went
into that Task Force
thinking Internet voting was feasible and then
decided it wasn’t. I’d
be glad to hear from McCormack who exactly they
were.
The Registrar-Recorder claims that “the problem of
security is not
solvable at this time according to the experts.”
Well, some experts
think it is and some experts think it isn’t. There
is certainly no
consensus on this point. That’s why additional
tests, demonstrations,
and deliberations are required to establish
legitimate standards for
secure remote Internet voting and to develop a
procedure for
certifying systems that can meet these standards.
Guest:
So at this point in time even though there are
several companies
trying to get a certified system…remember, nobody
can vote on a voting
system in California--and in 38 of the other
states--without it being
certified through a Federal and a state process to
make sure it’s
going to be accurate and there’s not a single
company at this point in
time that has a product that meets the rigorous
criteria.
Note:
Of course no remote Internet voting system has
been certified. Both
agencies referred to by McCormack--the Office of
California’s Secretary
of State and the Federal Election Commission--have
refused, despite
countless urgings from me and others, to set such
standards, at
whatever extreme level of security, accuracy,
availability, and other
criteria they choose, and disallow the use of any
remote Internet
voting system that fails to meet these standards.
Guest:
I think it’s coming in the future. I think that
we’re going to see
this. Why not? I mean, everyone’s using the
Internet. But as of
right now--and I don’t think in the next two to three
year--but I hope
within the next five, Marc’s going to be
absolutely right and this
will be available at, you know, libraries and,
by the way, our website
is www.lavote.net. If you haven’t received your
sample ballot and you
want to know where to go vote, just go in there:
www.lavote.net and
click on ?Where do I vote??, type in your address,
and bingo. It’s
totally interactive. You can look up your sample
ballot. We have
3,154 different varieties of sample ballot
depending on where you live.
Note:
This is a breathtaking
combination of changing the subject, distorting
what I said, and gibberish. In what sense I’m I “going
to be
absolutely right”?
In saying that remote Internet voting will be
available within the next five years? That’s not
what I said. I said
we need to implement remote Internet voting now as
a solution to the
dilemma created by Judge Wilson’s order and the
lack of money at the
county level.
Ms. McCormack is saying we can’t do that because
remote Internet voting
is not secure. The authorities she cites on this
point argue that it
is fundamentally and intrinsically insecure, that
it cannot be made
secure by any means. So, if they’re right, how
will it be possible to
allow remote Internet voting in five years, or
ten, or a hundred?
But if it can be made secure and the “authorities”
refuse to
acknowledge this, on account of non-technological
biases against
remote Internet voting and the changes in the
social distribution of
power and influence it might cause (similar to the
opposition of
record conglomerates to peer-to-peer file sharing
systems), then the
problem we face is one of values and interests and
not of
technologically-generated security.
Five years ago people told me that remote Internet
voting was a good
idea, but not just yet. “Wait five years,” they
said. I have. Now
the chief elections officer of the largest voting
entity in the U.S.
is telling me, “You know, everything you’re
saying, it just sounds so
right? I hope within the next five, Marc’s going
to be absolutely
right and this will be available at, you know, libraries.”
I’ve heard that before. I think they’re stalling,
and playing us for
fools. I think we could have secure remote
Internet voting now, only
six years after I first proposed it publicly in
the Virtual Voting
Rights Initiative in 1996.
And by the way, I don’t want to be “absolutely
right” just about having
Internet voting available in “libraries,”
where many people already
vote in various pre-Internet voting ways. What I,
and many others,
want is to vote securely over the Internet from
our offices, homes,
boats, aircraft, backyards, destination resorts,
cars (but not while
driving), and every other place the Internet now
or ever will reach,
stationary or mobile, domestic or foreign, on- or
off-planet.
Host:
Wow.
Guest:
Click and it comes up for you. This is modern
wonderful stuff and
Marc’s correct. At some point we’re going to be
voting that way.
Unfortunately, the security issue has not yet been
solved.
Host: Marc, thanks a lot for the call.
Host:
We also got a request from a listener to basically
sum up the court
mandate. Basically, it’s requiring all
Registrar-Recorders to get rid
of punch card voting by 2004?
Guest:
The lawsuit dealt with the nine counties in
California--which is 75% of
the registered voters voted on these--you know,
big counties are the
ones that have punch card voting, because punch
card voting is the
most inexpensive system and big counties are poor.
So we’re talking
San Diego, San
Bernardino, Alameda, L.A., Sacramento. These big
counties are the ones?9 counties out of the
58?that have lost their
voting systems. The other counties, many of them
are using optical
scan technology or a different kind of punch card
that isn’t the
pre-scored kind that causes—supposedly--the
problem. So we’re the ones
who are confronting the court order and have to do
something else in
time for March, 2004. Whether or not we’ll have
the time or the money
to put in a state-of-the-art modern system or
whether we have to
transition to a paper system in between is, at
this point, not totally
determined.
Host:
And is there any challenge, any legal challenge,
to that:
Guest:
Our attorneys are working with the Secretary of
State’s attorneys to
request a stay but the feeling is that it has no
chance and an appeal
would take so long and while the appeal is in
place, you know, we have
to conform to the code.
Host:
Got it.
Guest:
So, unfortunately, it’s not looking very positive.
Host:
Connie McCormack, we are out of time. Thank you so
much for spending
it with us.
Guest:
Thank you, Kitty.
Host:
You bet. This is 89.3, KPCC.
Note:
I couldn’t have stated the dilemma any more
clearly myself. Nine
California counties with 75% of the registered voters in the state
need to replace their antiquated punch card voting
systems by March
2004. The big counties involved don’t have the
money to do so. They
are hoping that they can get some money from a
bond measure coming up
for a vote on March 5th and from the Federal
Government.
They are so desperate they may need to revert to
even more antiquated
voting methods in order to eliminate the
now-banned punch cards.
This, they worry, will foul things up even worse
than the punch cards
ever could have. What to do? What to do?
A modest proposal: Put pressure on the Federal Election
Commission and
the Office of the Secretary of State to develop
and issue rigorous
standards for remote Internet voting systems.
Encourage companies to
have their remote Internet voting systems
certified according to these
standards. Buy, lease, or license these certified
secure remote
voting systems for use by the Nine Counties. Lobby
for changes in
whatever laws need to be modified to allow people
to vote remotely
over the Internet.
Encourage voters to sign up for remote Internet
voting. Run plenty of
tests and demonstrations to perfect the operation
of the system and
accustom people to using it. Determine roughly
what percentage of
registered and/or likely voters plan to vote
remotely over the
Internet and how many cannot access the Internet,
refuse to use the
Internet to vote, or absolutely require the
?polling place experience?
to feel right.
Then the counties can buy enough expensive touch
screen systems to
accommodate those who will be coming to the polls.
Since the
availability of remote Internet voting will
greatly reduce this
number, a lot of money can be saved, probably more
than enough to pay
for the remote Internet voting resources employed
in the overall
voting program.
A final note on security, technology, and
government operations. At
this moment, the Bush Administration is asking for
tens of billions of
dollars in additional funding to use the Internet
and its related
technologies on behalf of what it considers to be
its highest
priority: electronic surveillance. It’s a foregone
assumption of this
approach that the data gathered by Carnivore and
other high-tech tools
will be and will remain secure, protected against
foreign and domestic
enemies, and available only to the appropriate law
enforcement
authorities.
Security technologies perhaps not available to the
general public, or
even voting authorities, have no doubt been
developed and are in use
by those charged with watching us. Add to this the
technologies
developed by the Department of Defense to maintain
the security and
secrecy of battle-field transmissions and
top-level policy
consultations and it should be obvious that
maintaining the security
of a mere electronic ballot is child’s play and
could be provided on
an off-the-shelf basis were the will to do so
present.
One can only wonder why tens of billions of
dollars will be spent for
secure surveillance products and services while
the
Registrar-Recorders in nine California counties
must go to sleep every
night worrying where they will find the relative
pittances they need
to provide the voters in their jurisdictions with
the means to vote in
a legal, and, maybe, in a remote, way.
What we are facing is a dilemma even bigger than
how to obey a District
Court order. Technology, security, money, and
priorities are what are
involved in both moving to remote Internet voting
and in coping with
terrorist threats. What we need to decide as a
society is whether, in
simplified terms and a possibly false dichotomy,
we prefer to be free
or to be safe, assuming for the moment that more
electronic
surveillance of all our activities is what will
ultimately make us safe.
There is no shortage of people, companies and
politicians willing to
spend and receive vast amounts of money on behalf
of the
”surveillance-will-make-us-safe” alternative. There
are a lot fewer
individuals and groups speaking up for the
”remote-Internet-voting-will-make-us-free”
approach. There ought to
be more and they ought to listen to us.
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