Is pro-VVAT in the same category as anti-MMR?

williamgrogan

If every voter is allowed to inspect their vote and verify that it is correct and it is then deposited into a ballot box, then it's like the system is being tested every time it is used.

This level of confirmation is not necessary. You CAN inspect the vote you have entered into the E-Voting system before finishing and correct any errors. It is not necessary to print a bit of paper to ensure that a computer has correctly recorded an instruction. In fact if paper had never been invented you would never even consider that as a solution. "Hey how about we chop down some trees, flatten them out and record marks with burnt charcoal and then store the bits of flat crushed trees with the marks and count them all up and compare them to the computer - Doh!”

If every voter is allowed to inspect their vote and verify that it is correct and it is then deposited into a ballot box, then it's like the system is being tested every time it is used.

I have NEVER before heard someone say that they wanted to install a computer system that will have a parallel paper system that will test it on every occasion for ever. I cannot easily compute the exact odds that the E-Voting system will make an error between pressing <Enter> and the vote being stored but because I know it has been written by professional programmers and tested by the likes of the UK Electoral Reform Group & others and will be overseen by an independent committee it must be hundreds of thousands to one and certainly much more accurate than the paper system.

If any mistake occurs anywhere in the country, then we can be made aware of it. That was we would know with 100% accuracy that the election is a true representation of the electorate's intent.

I have addressed this already. You tell us how will VVAT spot mistakes?
100% accuracy, where were you when there was only 98% accuracy?
How can a paper system that itself cannot possibly be 100% accurate test something that can be? That’s like testing the accuracy of a laser operated measuring device by using a wooden ruler.

If the current set of represetatives gets to choose the next set of representatives, then that is not democracy

Ah! Come on! That’s paranoia.

OK so the current paper system isn't perfect, and non-VVAT E-Voting would be better, but VVAT E-Voting would be better still, so why don't we switch to that … the only real reason you are giving for not having VVAT is the cost. Is there any other reason?

Cost is a very good reason. Just as we make nearly all decisions on cost such as; what car to drive, what bottle of wine to drink, what restaurant to eat in, who gets to be operated on and when, the government must make decisions on how many hospitals to build, how much the pension is etc.. (I suspect many on this web site are middle class and do not have to consider what food to eat, but many people do.) You cannot just keep making e-voting more complex and more expensive because of irrational fears.

I most definitely think the system should be properly tested and I am fairly confident it has been but VVAT is not a substitution for proper testing and therefore has no use. If the testing is OK then the probability that the system is at least more accurate than the manual system is extremely high.

Testing is equivalent to doing a Scientific Study and the results of the testing are as valid as the results of a study.

I do sympathise with those of you who “lack faith” in the computer system. But that “lack of faith” is no different than a parent who is unsure whether to vaccinate their child because they cannot compute the very remote risks of MMR damaging them v the benefits of vaccination.

I think an audit system, as suggested by Ecksor, that is part of the electronic system is perfectly acceptable because it will not add significant cost and like the system can be “evolved” into a more powerful system over time. My own system has a completely (well nearly) separate Audit Sub System that is very useful at checking all other sub systems are OK. My own experience is that testing using parallel computer systems is far more satisfactory than printouts. (Incidentally did you know the Space Shuttle has 3 separate computer systems all programmed independently – ironic that the two crashes were caused by stupid human mistakes.)

…when no one knows how it works ….

This is obviously an incorrect statement, the people who wrote it do. Do you know how the software running the MRI scan works when you go into hospital?

Another example of techno-fear that something is too risky to be done is the Cassini Mission. There were demonstrations in the USA when it did its fly bys of Earth on its way to Saturn because people thought that it might crash into Earth and spew radioactive debris all over the place. The odds of this happening were millions to one against and even then very little chance that any actual deaths would occur.

If have seen people cry because I told them I was pro-Nuclear. They literally thought I was mad. Their fear of NP is off the wall. France happily generates 80% of its electricity with it. I told another anti-Sellefield campaigner recently that it was nothing to worry about and he told me I should see a Psychiatrist.

I am reminded by an argument I often make when Creationists say evolution is not proven and that basically all the biologists are wrong. I tell them that they believe the work of Scientists that build airplanes because they fly in them but not Scientists who use the exact same mechanisms but happen to study biology.

A doctor O'Leary from Trinity on the radio this morning said that the risk of MMR damaging your child was less than the risk of being injured in a car crash on the way to the doctor. I would say that the most likely risk to the E-Voting being a total failure on election day because it loses all the votes is about as likely as a nucear bomb going off and the EMP zapping the computers.

I heard today that France is to use the same E-Voting system as us.

Sparks

Originally posted by williamgrogan

This is obviously an incorrect statement, the people who wrote it do.

The dutch company who wrote it and Nathean Technologies, the crowd hired to look at it. Noone else. And that's for build 0111, which won't be the build used in the elections. And build 0111 turned up serious problems at the architectural level, let alone the code. And the code review was done mostly by one man.
So frankly, the statement that noone knows how it works is damn close to accurate. It's certainly true of everyone in this country....

Do you know how the software running the MRI scan works when you go into hospital?

No, but I do know that people have been given cancer because of software errors in PET scanners, and people have been killed in MRI scanners because of stupid human errors (like leaving a metal oxygen tank in the room when the scanner was turned on).

Another example of techno-fear that something is too risky to be done is the Cassini Mission.

Okay, let's get this sorted first. I'm not a luddite. I'm a researcher in a robotics lab in Trinity for crying out loud. If anything, I'm the opposite of a luddite. And noone is saying eVoting isn't a bad thing - they're saying this specific implementation is a bad thing.

And you're ignoring the two problems that everyone else is concerned over:

1) Human Error. We don't know how the source code is set up so we don't know how votes are being counted. Any number of errors could be in that section of the code, and we can't verify for ourselves that that code is correct.

2) Human Malice. Diebold eVoting machines in the US have already been tampered with during live elections. So the machines not only can be fiddled with, they have been fiddled with. And now the same party being hauled through the tribunals for corruption, a party led by a man who is a proven liar, is trying to force through an undetectably corruptable system, with no mechanism for detecting corruption of the results by a malicious party, and primary legislation to prevent the results being challanged even if such tampering was detected.
Is it any wonder people are worried?

Syth

I have addressed this already. You tell us how will VVAT spot mistakes?

A mistake can occur in two ways. Either the machine does not correctly record the voter's intent, or there is a mistake in adding up in the end.

The vote that the system stores is the same as the VVAT result. If the result is not as the voter intended, then the voter will be able to see this, and the mistake will be visible.

By randomly counting the paper result, we can see if there is a mistake. Or if there is an unbelieveable result (such as someone getting 100%), then we can recheck the paper result.

I know cost is a good thing to keep in mind, but I was just wondering if there was some other reason why you were against VVAT.

I disagree that VVAT will cost millions, but I don't have numbers to hand. (What a great argument!)

If you are so concerned about cost then you should recommend that we don't switch to E-Voting, as E-Voting will cost more than the current system.

ecksor

Originally posted by williamgrogan
I think an audit system, as suggested by Ecksor, that is part of the electronic system is perfectly acceptable because it will not add significant cost and like the system can be “evolved” into a more powerful system over time.

I don't know how you're comparing cost, but I'm not suggesting that those solution be adopted until they stand up to scrutiny. Oddly enough you seem to be quite prepared to adopt a technology based solution before it is proven to be adequate, but you're totally against a non-technology based solution that is considered adeqauate.

Victor

Originally posted by williamgrogan
I have linked the MMR vaccine scare to the VVAT scare because I think they are caused by similar woolly thinking. After Wakefield has been embarrassed, to put it mildly, by the Lancet saying they regret printing his research, his supporters didn’t bat an eyelid and continue to claim MMR causes their children’s autism.

You don't honestly claim to personally have the level of authority that the Lancet does, do you?

Originally posted by williamgrogan
Ah! Come on! That’s paranoia.

Others would call it healthy scepticism. Do you believe the spammers who send you e-mails about penis-enlaging pills aswell? And anyway paranoid people have enemies aswell.

Originally posted by williamgrogan
....... Cassini Mission........ ....... Nuclear..... ..... Creationists .....

Wahooo! What does that have to do witht he subject at hand?

Originally posted by williamgrogan
I heard today that France is to use the same E-Voting system as us.

Any links? Are they changing over to PR-STV? If they aren't, the aren't using the same system.

Originally posted by williamgrogan
But there are two big differences between the 2. ATC=10,000,000 lines of code, E-Voting = a few thousand?

Well the proposed system claims 200,000+ lines, 70,000 specific to the Irish system - you've got to ask why so much?

Originally posted by williamgrogan
The people who run Aer Rianta are politically appointed! They control the ATC system, same difference.

The IAA run ATC, not the AR amateurs.

williamgrogan

I accept that it’s unlikely a Robotic Engineer is a Luddite, but I said there were two categories, Luddites and those (hopefully) temporarily frightened by their argument. I suppose there is a third group, the conspiracy theorists.

1)……… we can't verify for ourselves that that code is correct.

If your robots ever become household pets will we get to see the software? (I sincerely hope you have Asimov’s “you cannot harm or allow ……" rules in them) Now that I think of it much of Science Fiction is devoted to the theme that people are frightened of robots. Do you envisage an anti-robot crusade? No doubt the Labout Party and Trade Unionists will object to their jobs being taken.

I am not opposed to testing, I’m not even particularly opposed to open source or experts being allowed look at the software but that’s a task for the oversight committee. VVAT, which means every machine has to have a printer and a contraption to guide the ballot via a window and into a box and then we have to deal with the 7000 boxes and count them etc.. all that will not be of any practical use in testing the software beyond what could be accomplished by a normal software test.

As regards cost; 7000 by say 1000 for a reliable clear printing high volume printer & Mercuri system contraption is €7,000,000 before we count the ongoing hardware maintenance, the box, paper, the storage and the counting. I have yet to see any suggestion as to when and what we count. Someone helpfully suggested counting when the vote was over 100% of the electorate.

2) Diebold eVoting machines in the US have already been tampered with during live elections. So the machines not only can be fiddled with, they have been fiddled with.

If you read through the www on any topic whether it’s Homeopathy, Fluoridation, Chernobyl or anti-Vaccine you will generally find more anti’s than pro’s. At a cursory glance you would be forgiven for been frightened out of your wits. Joe in another forum stated that he had to leave Ireland to get away from Fluoridated water. Are you making the same mistake? Unless you were a seasoned Skeptic and had read about the MMR controversy, a quick read of an anti-MMR site would create a reasonable doubt about the safety of MMR.

The same applies to the scaremongering by the anti-E-Voting & pro-VVAT sites. However look at one figure being bandied around by the VVAT people, “134 votes went missing in a Florida count”. Now read this.

''It's incomprehensible that 134 people went to the polls and didn't cast votes,'' said Lieberman, who served on the canvassing board that oversaw Tuesday night's count.

But the winning candidate, Ellyn Bogdanoff, said she attributes at least some of the undervote to Democrats who reached the polls and realized all the candidates were Republicans.

Is this not a perfectly logical answer that does not indicate any problem with the machines? The 2nd paragraph puts a different perspective on the matter.

Diebold: 13,000 staff worldwide. They make ATM’s, “burglar proof safes”, Alarm Systems, card swipe/security systems and write software besides making hundreds of thousands of E-Voting machines. Like 99% of the Irish population I never heard of Diebold until very recently.

Anyone who produces this much product & employs that many people is going to give the opportunity to a crusader to find some problems.

Some of the allegations are silly; investigators were able to guess passwords to gain access and tamper with machines. That is not imho a problem with the machines but a problem with the dummies. The same type of stupidity could and does occur when people leave the keys in their car and have them stolen when popping into the shop. Is that the car security’s fault? I still say a DRE is far safer than a wooden box and I think most reasonable people would agree. You don’t need a degree in IT to open a box and steal the votes.

http://www.diebold.com/

And now the same party being hauled through the tribunals for corruption, a party led by a man who is a proven liar, is trying to force through an undetectably corruptable system, with no mechanism for detecting corruption of the results by a malicious party, and primary legislation to prevent the results being challanged even if such tampering was detected.

Obviously not a FF supporter are you? Neither am I but I have to admit that the economy in Ireland is in amazing shape, people of our previously bankrupt, poor, sick, 100,000 emigrants a year (I was one myself) asset-less state are now the richest people in Europe. Personally I think this success is entirely due to Bertie and Charlie (with a little bit of help from the brains & scruples behind the operation, the PD’s). BTW, I am pleased to have this opportunity to debate with someone who has never lied! I think to suggest that the present generation of FF TD’s would in a conspiratorial manner try and rig Ireland’s next General Election tells us what level of paranoia you are coming from.

Is it any wonder people are worried?

People worrying is not evidence of anything except their ignorance. I saw an article recently where the writer pointed out that people in the affluent West were more worried about illness than those in Aids stricken Africa. It is well accepted by any time served ISS type that the worrying is mostly caused by the inability to calculate risk. Again a link to fear of MMR. Same thing.

Am I getting anywhere?

***Newsflash*** Martin Cullen admits on RTE News this morning, "I am not an idiot". See I told you.

williamgrogan

I think that Ecksor should make it quite clear to the other posters in the E-Voting forum that he banned me from posting. I do not think they realise this.

There are people making comments to points I raised before I was banned who may erroneously think that I am not replying because I accept their attempted rebuttals. I would also be surprised if Shane Hogan of the Labour Party would continue to post there if he thought I was banned.

Sparks

Originally posted by williamgrogan
I suppose there is a third group, the conspiracy theorists.

So because I note that the ruling party in this country has a long history of corruption, that the leader of that party is a known liar, that eVoting machines in other countries have been proven to have been manipulated in live elections and without detection at the time, and that no-one here other than a very small group of people (less than a hundred by quite a margin) know how the innards of the proposed eVoting machines work, and that even that few have pointed out serious security concerns, I'm a conspiracy theorist?
I don't think so, I think I'm just seeing what everyone else is seeing - a system with very serious, very valid security concerns being railroaded through Dail Eireann despite protests on all sides, and with primary legislation to prevent the results of that system being challanged in court.

If your robots ever become household pets will we get to see the software?

http://freeio.org/
http://www.orocos.org/
And JPL is releasing their software under an open source licence soon. Meanwhile, every major robotics research lab outside Japan will happily send you a copy of their software if you're interested in it, because that's what marks the successful software in this field - how many people use it.
And most experimental robots these days run linux anyway.

No doubt the Labout Party and Trade Unionists will object to their jobs being taken.

A real-life concern raised all over the world at different points in time by different groups, though so far not an especially serious one, since manufacturing always needs people.

I am not opposed to testing, I’m not even particularly opposed to open source or experts being allowed look at the software but that’s a task for the oversight committee.

Actually, it's a matter for us. It's our government, our electoral system, and our country. Not six or seven men sitting round a table elected by the people they're meant to be overseeing.

VVAT, which means every machine has to have a printer and a contraption to guide the ballot via a window and into a box and then we have to deal with the 7000 boxes and count them etc.. all that will not be of any practical use in testing the software beyond what could be accomplished by a normal software test.

Agreed. It will, however, be highly effective as a safeguard against manipulating the counts. Electronic memory is easily and undetectably modified - ink on paper is somewhat harder to change.

Unless you were a seasoned Skeptic and had read about the MMR controversy, a quick read of an anti-MMR site would create a reasonable doubt about the safety of MMR.
The same applies to the scaremongering by the anti-E-Voting & pro-VVAT sites.

I suppose it could. I'll just have to make do with my computer engineering and maths degrees and what I've learnt from my not-yet-completed PhD to let me discern what's a real and what's an imagined problem.

Diebold: 13,000 staff worldwide. They make ATM’s, “burglar proof safes”, Alarm Systems, card swipe/security systems and write software besides making hundreds of thousands of E-Voting machines. Like 99% of the Irish population I never heard of Diebold until very recently.
Anyone who produces this much product & employs that many people is going to give the opportunity to a crusader to find some problems.

Why do I get the distinct impression that this is the first time you've heard of the most notorious name in electronic voting?

Some of the allegations are silly; investigators were able to guess passwords to gain access and tamper with machines.

Firstly, that's all they'd have to do with our proposed system - the architectural review pointed out that the database used (Microsoft Access 97 no less :rolleyes:) is not encrypted and the password protecting it is not properly set up.

That is not imho a problem with the machines

Actually it is - especially since you're not telling the exact story. What happened was not that investigators hacked into the evoting machines, what happened was that they hacked into Diebold's own office computers, and downloaded several hundred megabytes of files, files which were taken by diebold out of the evoting machines during a live election in violation of federal law, but without being detected.
Gotta love wireless modems, no?

I still say a DRE is far safer than a wooden box and I think most reasonable people would agree. You don’t need a degree in IT to open a box and steal the votes.

True - but you can't tell when someone with a degree in IT has altered the results electronically. The prybar marks and broken lock and unconcious gardai, however, tend to give the game away with paper boxes....

Obviously not a FF supporter are you?

It would be hard to be a supported of the party that put our economy in the state it was in in the 1980s, nearly started an all-out war with the UK, gave the IRA their start-up capital and a hundred other criminal or unethical acts over the years of varying severity.

Neither am I but I have to admit that the economy in Ireland is in amazing shape, people of our previously bankrupt, poor, sick, 100,000 emigrants a year (I was one myself) asset-less state are now the richest people in Europe.

They've become citizens of luxemburg?

And for the record, FF didn't turn the economy around, ordinary workers did. Frankly, had FF not been skimming so much off the top, I think we'd have seen economic recovery a good decade earlier.

I think to suggest that the present generation of FF TD’s would in a conspiratorial manner try and rig Ireland’s next General Election tells us what level of paranoia you are coming from.

So substitute SF for FF if you wish. SF have, after all, a proven record of rigging elections in the North, and it's the same party down here. I don't personally believe it's necessary, but go ahead if it makes it easier to objectify the argument for you.

People worrying is not evidence of anything except their ignorance.

Except when they're professionally qualified in the subject area. Which is another reason why this isn't like the MMR debate. In that debate, virtually every qualified doctor was saying the anti-MMR research was sloppy and the claims unfounded. Here, the opposite is true.

Am I getting anywhere?

I'm afraid not.

***Newsflash*** Martin Cullen admits on RTE News this morning, "I am not an idiot". See I told you.

Never attribute to malice what incompetence is sufficent to explain.
And now Cullen's ruled out incompetence?

williamgrogan

My son made a point. If someone say pickpockets the official and steals his two keys (or is it one key each from two officials?) and after whatever start of day validation is run and when no one is looking bypasses whatever security there is re loading new programs and loads on the program that is a duplicate of the one running except bent and the DRE has VVAT then he can make the corrupt program alter the votes in favour of a particular candidate BUT print the selection that the voter actually wanted. Then the voter walks out happy that his vote was recorded correctly but it wasn’t. Unless we count all the paper votes always and compare them to the electronic votes always we will never catch this. This of course totally defeats the purpose of electronic voting. (BTW, afterwards our hacker who is facing several years in prison if caught has to replace the original program for end of day checking.) This has to be repeated on every DRE or the effect would be negligible.

Syth

If your disaster scenario happend then if someone appealed the result, we could find out the flaw, if we had no VVAT we would not be able to see the mistake and we would have to accept the result.

As you can see VVAT gives us an extra level of security.

Another thing about VVAT it make the system more transparent to the electorate. People have trust in the system. They know it works. If people can't trust an voting system (either paper or electrical) then they probably won't vote. VVAT gives the voter resassurance.

williamgrogan

So because I note that the ruling party in this country has a long history of corruption ………

The Party hasn’t, some of the individuals in it have been involved at times over the last 20 years of taking money and not declaring it. There have been maybe 5 FF TD’s and a handful of Local Councillors that are bent. There are thousands of members in FF who are not corrupt and FF consistently get 40% of the vote from the electorate who know all this. Less then what .01% are bent? FG has bent Councillors and TD’s as well. SF …….. well I have to be careful after the latest kidnapping. Your summary is a ridiculous exaggeration and completely OTT, which is consistent with “anti” crusades.

I'll just have to make do with my computer engineering and maths degrees

That didn’t stop Wakefield!

Are you suggesting that all people with IT & Maths degrees are immune from falling for scams, scare stories and conspiracy theories? Joe my friend who is anti-Fluoridation, anti-MMR etc.. is a teacher and has a degree.

It would be hard to be a supported of the party that put our economy in the state it was in in the 1980s

So you are not a socialist either? The electorate obviously fell for their policies. They were voted in. Lots of Economists with degrees think governments should spend more.

They've become citizens of luxemburg

Nit picker, 2nd then. 20 years ago we were probably the poorest.

bminish

Originally posted by williamgrogan
My son made a point. If someone say pickpockets the official and steals his two keys (or is it one key each from two officials?) and after whatever start of day validation is run and when no one is looking bypasses whatever security there is re loading new programs and loads on the program that is a ....

Yes but this isn't the only way things could get messed with, here are a few other more plausable scenarios

scenario 1
Faulty software on some machines, votes get lost or preference information gets corrupted. No audit trail (paper or otherwise ) so how is it even detected ?

Scenario 2
Security around machines isn't so good beforehand and machines get pre-loaded with votes. Unlike a paper ballot box it cannot be inspected at the start of the polls

Scenario 3
count center software gets manipulated with, there are many subtle ways in which the outcome of an election can be rigged, this would not necessarily be some random hacker, fixing an election is worth lots of money. without an audit trail there would be no proof of wrongdoing and it might even happen with tacit co-operation of election officials, how can others tell if software has been tampered with if they have no access to it?

Scenario 4
partial results 'leaked' before voting has stopped, this could have a dramatic impact, this has already happened with the Diebold system in the US.


The overall computer security and integrity of the system that the Irish Government are trying to foist on us has not been sufficiently tested or explored by suitably qualified and independent security experts.
This is the basis of my objection to Electronic voting in the form that FF want us to use and you have offered no real counter to these points.

.Brendan

Victor

Originally posted by williamgrogan
I still say a DRE is far safer than a wooden box and I think most reasonable people would agree.

Metal box, with lock and seals.

Originally posted by williamgrogan
You don’t need a degree in IT to open a box and steal the votes.

No, but you have to get past the polling staff and the garda at the polling station or the armed gardaí while in transit or at the count centre.

Originally posted by williamgrogan
I have to admit that the economy in Ireland is in amazing shape, people of our previously bankrupt, poor, sick, 100,000 emigrants a year (I was one myself) asset-less state are now the richest people in Europe. Personally I think this success is entirely due to Bertie and Charlie ...

You confuse income with wealth. And the boom, if you speak to an economist is large due to Bertie and Charlie riding a demographic and technological wave, not their "excelllent" economic strategy.

Originally posted by williamgrogan
***Newsflash*** Martin Cullen admits on RTE News this morning, "I am not an idiot". See I told you.

Maybe not an idiot, but he admits to being computer illiterate.

Originally posted by williamgrogan
My son made a point. If someone say pickpockets the official and steals his two keys (or is it one key each from two officials?)

There appears to be only one key. Given the lax security at the public displays, I could have had "acquired" several copies by today.

Originally posted by williamgrogan
This has to be repeated on every DRE or the effect would be negligible.

As many as 20 seats in the last election were decided by less than 50 votes. All you would have to do is alter a few machines. Also how would the officials be able to check all 7000 machines at the start and close of polling to make sure the right software was there (as opposed to the wrong software saying it was the right software).

williamgrogan

Another thing about VVAT it make the system more transparent to the electorate. People have trust in the system. They know it works. If people can't trust an voting system (either paper or electrical) then they probably won't vote. VVAT gives the voter resassurance.

I do not believe that people today have to see a screen that indicates how they voted AND a printed piece of paper through a window to trust a computer system. I already pointed out that the printed paper can say one thing and the recorded vote stored something different. Once the voter knows this then that element of VVAT is useless. In fact the whole “Mercuri Window into ballot box” thing is useless. It proves nothing.

Furthermore, the same can be said about the 3 separate vaccines v the MMR. People would have trusted it more, it would have cost more, worked less well and then the whole idea has become discredited anyway.

The problem with all the scenarios and all your arguments is the same. All systems have flaws. All systems that are better than the one the government picked are in turn worse than some other system ad infinitum. All security has holes. What about the risks?

For the outcome of an election to be changed the following must be considered….

Bugs:

If there are bug/s that will cause an actual problem. The vast majority of bugs or sloppy code never cause a problem. I remember reading once that Windows 98 when released had 60,000 KNOWN bugs.
Bugs that cause cosmetic or hiccup type problems don’t matter
Bugs are like mutations then have no sense of purpose. A bug that gives say 5% of FF votes to FG and that this makes a difference to the outcome are bordering on impossible. These weird bugs could just as easily also give back 5% of the FG votes to FF or give them to Screaming Lord Such and be exposed straightaway.
That a bug that causes a problem is of its nature not detectable by testing by the programmer, his superiors and outside testing agencies
That the bug escapes detection in the trial runs here and in other countries
That a bug is only minor enough or causes a problem that falls within a narrow range so that it’s not detected in the results. A bug that totally screws up is actually no harm from one perspective as the election would be declared invalid and re-run. Money is lost and Ministers resign but we just have another election.

Fraud

That the election will be close, i.e. if it’s not fiddled within a reasonable % of the opinion polls its unlikely to work. In the next election no one is going to believe that SF can fairly get 51% of the vote. Not even SF.
That those wishing to subvert it know this in advance and which constituencies it will be close
That there are constituencies that can be influenced to some effect
That there exists people with the will & the money to subvert it – does anyone really think that there are people in Ireland that are that concerned as to who runs the country?
That they have the expertise or can get it without it becoming known
Conspiracies are very difficult to maintain, especially if too many people get involved
That no one talks or gets a conscience
That the basic human security can be overcome, the Garda, the officers, the public
That they can devise a workable plan, i.e. to load a bogus program they would almost certainly need to have the original source code and that they supplier didn’t know they had it.
They then have to get at the DRE’s or the counting PCs, even to do this they have to get into the relevant buildings. A voter cannot hang around a polling booth waiting for an opportunity to hack into a DRE
That the scam works
That the scam is not detected
That they don’t mind going to jail.
Whoever is voted in only gets to stay 5 years

I think that the VVAT issue is only a stick with which to beat the E-Voting idea with. It’s similar to the argument that maybe vaccination itself is not dangerous but the preservatives that are in it are. VVAT on the face of it is an absurd idea. Paper to validate a computer. Come on, seriously? To validate a computer system with “paper” is obviously silly. You don’t need a degree in Nuclear Physics to figure that out.

The parallels between MMR and VVAT are amazing. I just thought of another. The UK Government were under a lot of pressure to change from MMR to three at a time jabs (actually 3 jabs by 2 doses = 6 visits) single jabs. From a cursory glance that seems quite reasonable. The separate 3 jabs are every bit as good and would placate the anti-MMR brigade. It would of course cost approximately 3 times as much. Why not then? Why not VVAT? No downside except cost?

The reason is that children who do not get all the jabs at the same time are not immunised for longer periods and far more importantly there is statistically a higher probability that some parents will find it more difficult to go through the extra visits so less children will be properly vaccinated. In 90 countries where MMR is available, no country gives out the single jabs. Furthermore the government decided in so far as there was no proof that MMR was dangerous and much proof that even if it was it was so low as to be below detectable level that it would be wrong if them to do it for an incorrect reason. Ditto VVAT.

I am delighted that the Minister has adopted the same reasoning with the daft VVAT suggestion. He is as right as Michael Martin is regarding standing up to far worse pressure over his totally sensible smoking legislation. Cullen also ignored calls from an obvious FF mountainy man in Noel O’Flynn from Cork North Central who demanded VVAT. From the sound of him, Noel wouldn’t know a Game Boy from a male prostitute or a PC from a sexist comment.

VVAT - An Irish solution to an Irish problem. To be sure, to be sure!

Stats:

18 TD’s were elected in the current Dail with less than the number of spoiled votes(and the returning office said that the vast majority of spoiled votes were accidents) .

Have any of you considered that your opposition to E-Voting and this VVAT nonsense may undermine confidence and result in a pause on E-Voting for a generation? We would then loose all the advantages:

End of randomness when transferring votes
Increased security and a reduction to vanishing levels of corruption as the technology develops
Internet based voting
Possible dumping of all votes in detail on the net – would be fascinating to those who like data (I’m one of those sad types).
…. And who knows what else?

You are risking throwing the baby out with the bath water.

I am especially critical of those claiming to work in IT. We all know that many people who “work in IT” are little more than operators & coders and have no systems design experience and haven’t actually been out of their cots and are not in a position to put themselves forward as “IT Experts”.

Why VVAT? Is VVAT now the focus of Luddism? When E-Voting first became a public issue a few weeks ago there were many reasons put forward to oppose it; general anti-technology, pro-“the fun of the counting night”, power failures, loss of the spoiled vote, secrecy (particularly in connection with the spoiled vote), hacking, faulty software, the Dutch angle, FF crooks, testing of software and of course VVAT. I would suspect that any anti-brigade will come up with many ideas to oppose change BUT will tend towards focusing on one or two reasons after some argument. They are REALLY opposed to the technology itself and use the now focused on excuse as the mechanism to stop it. The VVAT issue could still stop the introduction of E-Voting for a generation. MMR almost completely settled on the link with Autism with anti-E-Voting with VVAT.

Ask yourself, “Am I being suckered into supporting VVAT and as a consequence really supporting the opposition to progress?

PS

All you would have to do is alter a few machines

You wouldn't know which machines in advance of the information about the close result.

Victor

Originally posted by williamgrogan
You wouldn't know which machines in advance of the information about the close result.

You could have a very good idea, based on previous results and polls. All one would have to do is shift maybe 50-100 votes on one machine in each of a few marginal constituencies.

Originally posted by williamgrogan
Less then what .01% are bent?

This compares with accusations about 20% of the 1987-1989 cabinet.

Sparks

Originally posted by williamgrogan
The Party hasn’t, some of the individuals in it have been involved at times over the last 20 years of taking money and not declaring it. ... Less then what .01% are bent?

It's a lot more than 0.01%, and it's the top few percent at that.

Your summary is a ridiculous exaggeration and completely OTT, which is consistent with “anti” crusades.

It's also supported by historical fact.

Are you suggesting that all people with IT & Maths degrees are immune from falling for scams, scare stories and conspiracy theories? Joe my friend who is anti-Fluoridation, anti-MMR etc.. is a teacher and has a degree.

"Joe your mate" is required to have a degree. The requirement doesn't state in what. It could be a BA in paranormal studies for all the H.Dip. cares.

Those points aside, I notice you haven't addressed my actual argument, just the trimmings around it. Care to rectify that?

Sparks

Originally posted by williamgrogan
I do not believe that people today have to see a screen that indicates how they voted AND a printed piece of paper through a window to trust a computer system.

They don't want to see both to trust the computer system - they want both to trust the human part of the system.

I already pointed out that the printed paper can say one thing and the recorded vote stored something different. Once the voter knows this then that element of VVAT is useless. In fact the whole “Mercuri Window into ballot box” thing is useless. It proves nothing.

Nothing could be further from the truth. If the VVAT does not agree with the internal database, the discrepency can be detected.

The problem with all the scenarios and all your arguments is the same. All systems have flaws.

And yet, the government is introducing both a system that takes no account of this and legislation to prevent legal challanges to the results of that system in the event of corruption or error.

If there are bug/s that will cause an actual problem. The vast majority of bugs or sloppy code never cause a problem.

If that's an acceptable solution to your way of thinking, then you don't really need a vote in the first place, because you'll accept any old half-assed solution.

A bug that gives say 5% of FF votes to FG and that this makes a difference to the outcome are bordering on impossible.

And yet, they've happened in live elections in the states and not detected until after the election. Thus proving that they need to be kept in mind.

That a bug that causes a problem is of its nature not detectable by testing by the programmer, his superiors and outside testing agencies

That's simply not true. Software can be debugged. Open source software is debugged fastest because there are more people looking at it.

That the election will be close, i.e. if it’s not fiddled within a reasonable % of the opinion polls its unlikely to work. In the next election no one is going to believe that SF can fairly get 51% of the vote. Not even SF.

And yet every political pundit is predicting a massive increase in the SF seats taken in this eleciton and the next general election. So how do we know if they really got 40% or only 25%?

That those wishing to subvert it know this in advance and which constituencies it will be close

Or simply change the numbers on the day, as was shown to be completely possible in the states remotely using radio modems.

That there exists people with the will & the money to subvert it – does anyone really think that there are people in Ireland that are that concerned as to who runs the country?

Yes. They're called politicians. How can you argue on one line that SF are not to be trusted and on the next that noone is that bothered?

That they have the expertise or can get it without it becoming known
Conspiracies are very difficult to maintain, especially if too many people get involved

In the Arms Trials of the 1970s, we had over a hundred troops deployed in northern ireland, over the border. No-one knew about it outside the army, civil defence and government - and it's not mentioned in too many history books even today.
CJH's providing the seed capital for the IRA isn't covered too well either.
And to point out the classical biggie, noone knows who shot JFK...

That the basic human security can be overcome, the Garda, the officers, the public

Been done in the states. Radio modem. Go look it up.

That they can devise a workable plan, i.e. to load a bogus program they would almost certainly need to have the original source code and that they supplier didn’t know they had it.

You're assuming that there's noone in the original supplier who's corruptable. Since most humans are, that's a bit of a stretch. They're a private sector company anyway.

They then have to get at the DRE’s or the counting PCs, even to do this they have to get into the relevant buildings. A voter cannot hang around a polling booth waiting for an opportunity to hack into a DRE

Radio modem. Go look it up.

Whoever is voted in only gets to stay 5 years

Unless they're returned to power every five years....

I think that the VVAT issue is only a stick with which to beat the E-Voting idea with.

No, it's not. VVAT is a good idea, and so is eVoting - it's this particular system that's the problem.

VVAT on the face of it is an absurd idea. Paper to validate a computer. Come on, seriously? To validate a computer system with “paper” is obviously silly. You don’t need a degree in Nuclear Physics to figure that out.

Wrong. VVAT validates the results, not the computer.

Why not VVAT? No downside except cost?

VVAT is required for ensuring the result is not comprimised. It's like car insurance - hopefully you'll never need it, but it's needed so badly when you do need it, that it's illegal to drive without it.

I am delighted that the Minister has adopted the same reasoning with the daft VVAT suggestion.

He's incorrect, and so are you. And that's a professional opinion from a qualified computer engineer. And I'd not be alone in giving that opinion.
Can you say your opinion is a professional one from a qualified person?

From the sound of him, Noel wouldn’t know a Game Boy from a male prostitute or a PC from a sexist comment.

The same can be said of many in Government, including Bertie himself, who has no college degree in this area, no postgraduate degree in this area, in fact no formal education in this area whatsoever.

VVAT - An Irish solution to an Irish problem. To be sure, to be sure!

Actually, it's not an Irish solution, it was thought of elsewhere.

18 TD’s were elected in the current Dail with less than the number of spoiled votes(and the returning office said that the vast majority of spoiled votes were accidents) .

That's irrelevant to the VVAT issue.
As to the spoilt votes issue, noone wants the right to spoil their vote. They want the right to vote None of the Above, which is a valid choice.

Have any of you considered that your opposition to E-Voting and this VVAT nonsense may undermine confidence and result in a pause on E-Voting for a generation? We would then loose all the advantages:

Please point out one person who's saying that eVoting is a bad idea, as opposed to saying that this particular system is a bad one.

End of randomness when transferring votes

The proposed system does not eliminate randomness - it simulates it to preserve randomness in the vote transferral process - and because you can't challange a result, you can't have a recount which would, because of the algorithim, be different, as we saw in the General Election.

Increased security and a reduction to vanishing levels of corruption as the technology develops

That's not the case right now.

Internet based voting

And that's not impossible, but if we got a secure internet voting system to work properly, it would be the first time in computing's 50 year history that any large or complex networked system worked securely.
Let me reiterate.
First time ever.
Including financial systems and military systems with dedicated lines.

I am especially critical of those claiming to work in IT. We all know that many people who “work in IT” are little more than operators & coders and have no systems design experience and haven’t actually been out of their cots and are not in a position to put themselves forward as “IT Experts”.

If you're going to take potshots at other people's professional reputations I think you need to give details of your qualifications first. After all, how do we know you're not a 15-year-old kid on his father's computer?

Sparks

Originally posted by williamgrogan
My son made a point. If someone say pickpockets the official and steals his two keys (or is it one key each from two officials?) and after whatever start of day validation is run and when no one is looking bypasses whatever security there is re loading new programs and loads on the program that is a duplicate of the one running except bent and the DRE has VVAT then he can make the corrupt program alter the votes in favour of a particular candidate BUT print the selection that the voter actually wanted. Then the voter walks out happy that his vote was recorded correctly but it wasn’t. Unless we count all the paper votes always and compare them to the electronic votes always we will never catch this. This of course totally defeats the purpose of electronic voting. (BTW, afterwards our hacker who is facing several years in prison if caught has to replace the original program for end of day checking.) This has to be repeated on every DRE or the effect would be negligible.

Firstly, it has already happened in the US that the software was replaced at the last minute with no oversight whatsoever. It wasn't even detected for over a fortnight.
Secondly, you've just given a prime reason why the VVAT is necessary. Of course it'll be checked if the results are in any way suspect. In fact for this election (or whatever one is the first eVoting election), the candidates will all be demanding recounts. Is that wasteful and time-consuming? Yes. Could we do it cheaper and faster? Sure, we could appoint Bertie dictator-for-life. But instead, we choose a representative democracy. The pricetag is part of the cost of that decision. And just remember - had the government done this right the first time, we wouldn't be seventy grand in the hole allready.

williamgrogan

They don't want to see both to trust the computer system - they want both to trust the human part of the system. Nothing could be further from the truth. If the VVAT does not agree with the internal database, the discrepency can be detected.

But the printout does NOT prove their vote was recorded as displayed on the paper as per my previous argument. Furthermore whether or not it did, only the pro-VVAT are pushing this, the ordinary punter would never even have though of it. This is an invention of a paranoid. Belt & braces.

I just realised it will increase further the time it takes to vote and cause queues. What happens when people say that what is on the paper is not what the entered (because they actually made a mistake?) Do we have a shredder in the loop?

If that's an acceptable solution to your way of thinking, then you don't really need a vote in the first place, because you'll accept any old half-assed solution

This is a sanctimonious statement. You who are without bugs cast the first stone.

You obviously are a big fan of Open Source. Good, I think it has merits but it is not essential. The VAST majority of the world’s commercial software is not and I suspect never will be open source.

Please give me details for all anecdotal evidence you use as the one I could check (the 134 “missing” votes in Florida) did not impress me and leaves me to believe that I am getting, as is usual from the anti-MMR brigade, distorted “stories”.

When CJD “supplied the seed capital for the IRA” a very large % of the male population of Ireland were not too far away from going over the border themselves. I don’t know what age you are but anyone of my age can remember the brutality of the Unionists and as an 18 year old I discussed “going over the border”. Believe me I’m not a Sinner. You know of the burning of the British Embassy & even the British Rail office in Cork and the crowds that turned up.

This brings up an important point. The biggest treat to democracy is not and is unlikely to be the voting mechanism. There are many other events that are far more likely that could undermine it. As I said a complete cock up with the E-Voting will just mean a re-run of the election and a lot of embarrassed faces.

As you “dismiss” each point of my list of conditions necessary you omit a rather important point. The MULTIPLICATION of the probabilities is rather important. Individually one can see how the individual conditions may break down but the odds have to be compounded. Someone in Ohio might get the keys from a lazy official, someone in DC might get a password, someone in Boston might get access to the DRE etc.. but the odds of all these things happening in one place are very large, particularly as you are pointing out mainly ACCIDENTAL security breaches that we know about afterwards. The probability that something “can” happen that did is certainty. In other words, how can you plan to say corrupt Cork Nth Central on the basis of a lazy official vis a vis his password when the headlines the day after the election point out the lazy official was in Leitrim, not to mention that the close call between the last seat between SF and FF was in Kerry?

“Private sector companies” pay for most of the upkeep of the universities. Their employees pay the tax that pays the balance.

Unless they're returned to power every five years

My point was they would have to organise this fantastic conspiracy every 5 years, minimum.

Wrong. VVAT validates the results, not the computer

It doesn't validate anything.

Car Insurance, its more like replacing the air bag with cotton wool on the basis that you don’t trust the computer to inflate the airbag.

The reports of SF “cheating” in NI has to be taken in the context of the undemocratic partition of Ireland. As far as I know there is no evidence that they have cheated in the Republic.

He's incorrect, and so are you. And that's a professional opinion from a qualified computer engineer. And I'd not be alone in giving that opinion.
Can you say your opinion is a professional one from a qualified person?

I was writing computer software when you were in nappies.

None of the government can have degrees in everything, so that point is irrelevant. Have you ever wondered why so few Engineers are in power, anywhere?

“None of the above”, is rubbish. It is literally essential to elect a government to run the country. If we all did that THEN you would have a constitutional problem. As has been pointed out many people died to get you the right to vote. It is not a “valid choice” under the law.

I have pointed out that attacking E-Voting via the VVAT is attacking E-Voting but just using this spurious argument. Same as the anti-MMR brigade cite Autism. The use of anecdotal evidence on which a spin has been placed is also similar.

No Democratic candidates – no wonder 134 people walked away without voting.

One of the biggest differences between the theoretical view of reality that exists in universities and the business world is that businesses, and that includes the E-Voting companies and their products, and the politicians have to live in the real world. Perfect systems don’t exist. Perfect systems based on the intellectual & philosophical teachings of Lenin failed totally and en passant killed millions.

Why didn’t you Open Source/Linux/anti-MS/IT Experts present the government 10 years ago with an E-Voting fait a complet?

The IT people I refer to are people who are making technical comments outside their expertise but putting themselves across in a way that may fool people. I am not referring to the “experts” who I accept know about this and have though about it a lot. There are experts in medicine that support Acupuncture, Dentists that replace Amalgam fillings, Scientists that cause MMR scares......

If “the people” or the political parties were intrinsically crooked and cheated as a matter of course then you couldn’t have a democracy in the first place.

Firstly, it has already happened in the US that the software was replaced at the last minute with no oversight whatsoever. It wasn't even detected for over a fortnight.

Could I have details? I suspect that this was not case a not of hacking.

€70,000.???

Sparks

Originally posted by williamgrogan
But the printout does NOT prove their vote was recorded as displayed on the paper as per my previous argument.

That's the whole point of the VVAT. The VVAT is what the voter voted, recorded on paper, immutable. It provides an independent mechanism to verify the results. It does not act as a debugging tool for the electronic system - that's not it's function.

Furthermore whether or not it did, only the pro-VVAT are pushing this, the ordinary punter would never even have though of it.

Would the "ordinary punter" have thought of eVoting?

I just realised it will increase further the time it takes to vote and cause queues. What happens when people say that what is on the paper is not what the entered (because they actually made a mistake?) Do we have a shredder in the loop?

The idea with VVAT is that you make your selections on the screen and confirm them: then the VVAT is printed and you cross-check. If the two don't match, you stop the election because there's a serious bug in the software.

You obviously are a big fan of Open Source. Good, I think it has merits but it is not essential. The VAST majority of the world’s commercial software is not and I suspect never will be open source.

But commercial software is not what eVoting software should be.
And there's more open source software in commercial software than you might thing. Unix, don't forget, at least in it's BSD variant, was written using an open source model, and it runs most of the major systems out there.

Please give me details for all anecdotal evidence you use as the one I could check (the 134 “missing” votes in Florida) did not impress me and leaves me to believe that I am getting, as is usual from the anti-MMR brigade, distorted “stories”.

Here we go:
Evoting software patched without oversight in Georgia election. More details, including the actual code involved.

Here are the Ken Clark memos about "end runs around the system" and "King County is famous for it":
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/greatesthits/Oct2001msg00118.html
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/greatesthits/Oct2001msg00122.html
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/greatesthits/Oct2001msg00124.html

In fact, here are the source documents for a lot of the claims, including legal documents pointing out how a key developer in the developing of the diebold evoting systems had a criminal record for 23 counts of embezzlement and was imprisoned from 1991 to 1995.

Here are instructions for rigging an election using diebold machines.

Here's a news article on how the CEO of diebold said he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." and then went on to raise and donate thousands of dollars to the republican party.

And here's the slashdot story (with links to source documents) on the security problems in the diebold systems from those who gained access to the source code.

Here is a small compendium of news articles on incorrect tallying in electronic voting systems in the states.

Okay. Can we agree I've presented enough sources to prove my statements were true?

And why are diebold so important? Well, guess what they run their system on? Yup, you guessed it - the same Access database that the proposed nedap system uses. Meaning it's quite relevant.

you are pointing out mainly ACCIDENTAL security breaches that we know about afterwards.

No I'm not. I'm pointing out deliberate security breaches that were just not exploited so far as we know. They're still highly illegal under federal law mind you.

how can you plan to say corrupt Cork Nth Central on the basis of a lazy official vis a vis his password when the headlines the day after the election point out the lazy official was in Leitrim, not to mention that the close call between the last seat between SF and FF was in Kerry?

Neither of those statements have much bearing on a deliberate effort to subvert the evoting system.

“Private sector companies” pay for most of the upkeep of the universities. Their employees pay the tax that pays the balance.

No, they don't. At least not in the one I work in.

My point was they would have to organise this fantastic conspiracy every 5 years, minimum.

And mine is that it's not that much to organise, compared to dropping over a hundred armed troops in plain clothes into another country.

It doesn't validate anything.

How can you say that? VVAT records the input into the vote-counting software. You know the output, therefore you can verifly that the results are correct and valid.

Car Insurance, its more like replacing the air bag with cotton wool on the basis that you don’t trust the computer to inflate the airbag.

Nope. It's more like fully comprehensive car insurance because you don't trust the other guy to follow the law.

As far as I know there is no evidence that they have cheated in the Republic.

No, though there is evidence of very shady dealings prior to the election to garner votes, especially with Ferris. Which I point out to show that the idea of illegal dealings to win an election is not one that dissuades them.

I was writing computer software when you were in nappies.

That doesn't tell me what your qualifications are though, does it?

None of the government can have degrees in everything, so that point is irrelevant.

On the contrary, it's highly relevant for this specific case because the technical details of the eVoting system are exceptionally important.

Have you ever wondered why so few Engineers are in power, anywhere?

Indeed.

“None of the above”, is rubbish. It is literally essential to elect a government to run the country.

Yes, but it's also essential to be able to say "I don't agree with any of these candidates' positions and so I choose None of the Above". But this is at best a seperate issue from the VVAT.

I have pointed out that attacking E-Voting via the VVAT is attacking E-Voting but just using this spurious argument.

And I'm pointing out that protesting against the proposed system because of it's technical defects is not the same thing as protesting against eVoting as a whole. In fact, I've said in other threads that there's a perfectly acceptable system in use in austrailia called eVACS. It's just this nedap system we think is untrustworthy.

politicians have to live in the real world.

Now that is a can of worms of a debate. But for now, let's leave it lie.

Perfect systems don’t exist.

And yet, there's a perfectly acceptable system in use in austrailia right now.

Why didn’t you Open Source/Linux/anti-MS/IT Experts present the government 10 years ago with an E-Voting fait a complet?

eVACS.
Look it up, please.
Or even read the source code.

And then there's the Open Voting Consortium.

Could I have details? I suspect that this was not case a not of hacking.

See above...

€70,000.???

Pardon my fingers, I meant seventy million euro. Which is how much the estimate for the altered nedap machines was coming to earlier this week.

williamgrogan

That's the whole point of the VVAT. The VVAT is what the voter voted, recorded on paper, immutable

But its not if someone has replaced the software with a fraudulent copy that prints one thing and stores another. If the voter knows that he can be shown a vote for candidate A, which is what his intention was, but its logged as a vote for candidate B then it does not assure him. Furthermore a bug that prints OK but records incorrectly say 50 times in one booth would not be detectable in a constituency even with a count of the paper as from previous counts we know they are not accurate enough.

I think the ordinary voter thinks e-voting is overdue.

If the two don't match, you stop the election because there's a serious bug in the software.

The event you describe does not prove “there is a serious bug”. It may indicate a bug but not prove it. In every election there are many events that cause votes to be lost. The idea that one such event would stop an election falls into the category of silliness that I have already referred to where people accept 98% accuracy maximum in a paper election but expect 100% from a computer system.

There is a very important point here I must make. One of the reasons, I have no doubt concerned the planners, that VVAT should NOT be introduced is exactly the reason you give that it should be. As it is almost certain that 1,000,000 printouts will not equal 1,000,000 screens or tally with the count and such a conflict would cause a problem of confidence you do not use VVAT.

I do not believe it’s possible at present to create a software SYSTEM that is 100.000% reliable. However, I do believe that the E-Voting as proposed by the government is almost certain to be far more reliable than the present system.

Open Source is a curate’s egg. It has many advantages but also many disadvantages. Obvious disadvantages are that it is not commercially viable AND everyone gets to see the source. 96%? 97% of computers in the world now run Windows. Unix is a minor player. (Incidentally, MS was developed in a garage by a college drop out, maybe that’s why the college people hate it?)

So the source that was put on a PC was not a hackers as one would imagine. It was a valid program put on by a valid employee but not OK’ed by the oversight committee. Wrong but these type of things happen in manual counting systems.

According to Harris, this scenario is particularly worrisome in light of what happened in the Georgia gubernatorial race, which ended in a major upset that defied all polls and put a Republican in the governor's seat for the first time in more than 130 years.
Republican candidate Sonny Perdue managed to unseat Democratic incumbent Roy Barnes with only 51 percent of the vote. It was the first time an incumbent governor had not won his second term since Georgia law allowed back-to-back terms in 1978.
Pundits have attributed the upset to dissatisfaction with the incumbent for altering a Confederate symbol on the state flag and to effective stumping by President George W. Bush on behalf of Perdue.
Harris acknowledged no proof exists that anyone rigged the election systems, but she said, "We'll never know exactly what happened in Georgia because there's no paper trail to verify the votes."

The above doesn’t impress me, is it supposed to? My italics.

If this is even to be relevant then you are arguing that any “upset” is automatically suspicious and a re count necessary.

The 3 memos (if not fraudulent and not irrelevant) only indicate that password protection is absent once access is gained to the DB. So what? There are no passwords on a ballot box. The DB’s will be on equipment that is guarded, password protected outside of access to the DB and I understand there are physical keys. It is literally impossible to make a system completely foolproof. In fact you don’t want to, need to or try to. Your argument in a nutshell is that these memos indicate that security is not 100%. But that’s only valid if it should be. I did say these systems will evolve to be better and that includes security.

Why do the “checksum” errors bother you so much? A year of trawling and this is what the guy comes up with. Did anyone say computers are perfect? From the memos we do not know the full story. The “user” may be mis-reporting. If I had a euro for every time a client or a support person reported a major error that wasn’t even an error I would be a multi-millionaire.

Today a company in the UK loaded the latest version of my software. I got the following email from a customer support person. It has been copied and pasted from my Outlook and I have only removed names and company details.

Sent: 26 February 2004 11:10
To: Bill Grogan
Subject: Select Invoices for Receipt

Hi Bill
Had to stop our V16 & V17 customers using this feature until we have a fix.

Naturally, they are pretty unhappy as it is month end time …………. Wonder if you have a chance to look at this one as I would like to get back to them with a timescale. Thanks for any help. J

Sounds bad doesn’t it? I too though it indicated a bug, although it meant that a single feature out of 1,000 in the system and in that feature a 1 to 100 situation could not be handled AUTOMATICALLY but had to be done “manually” was hardly important enough to warrant, the opening sentence.

Guess what? The entire matter was simply the absence of a feature. Not a bug, not a design flaw simply someone trying to do something that they thought should have been possible or more to the point thought that they had done a different way before.

Context is essential, it separates the scare mongering from reality. There is no difference between the web site you linked to and any anti-anything web site. They trawl up as much stuff as they can find. Most of its rubbish.

The “Rob-Georgia” thing is rubbish. I came across it before. There is an assumption among the “conspiracy theory fans” that the file name means “to rob the voters of Georgia of their votes.” No evidence for this. Its as impressive as the Mars Face was to the Looney Tunes Brigade.

Mistakes such as storing 40,000 files (the 40,000 is impressive isn’t it?) happen all the time and always will, so what’s new. This is being used to indicate that Diebold are particularly careless. A company founded 120 years with 13,000 staff and still signing contracts for ten’s of millions of dollars as recently as this year cannot be all bad.

The CEO of Diebold is hardly so open about his links to Bush if he has something to hide. The USA is run differently than here. Some of the things they do sound weird from our perspective but they are not if you are an American. It’s patriotic in America to give money to politicians. Private Enterprise is MUCH bigger there than here. That’s why they are much richer than every other country in the word. They do not see this as a problem in the same way as the lefties in Europe do.

You will get all the same sort of illogical, disjointed, trying-to-connect-things-that-are-not-connected arguments on any activist site. They even say it’s an activist site. “The News for Nerds” site you refer to is appropriately titled.

The notion that a computer programmer will examine someone else’s code and say, “Wow! Great! I would never have thought of that. The guy was a genius, and I’m really impressed with the comments!”, is far less likely than me winning the Lotto, and I don’t even play it.

The only thing you have proved is that you are a conspiracy theorist and that nothing mankind does is perfect and I agree with you fully.

Re The Australian Open Source System

The ACT's electronic voting system, which was first used at the October 2001 election, is the first of its kind to be used for parliamentary elections in Australia. The system uses standard personal computers as voting terminals, with voters using a barcode to authenticate their votes. Voting terminals are linked to a server in each polling location using a secure local area network.

I would have thought that the opening paragraph would frighten the daylights out of you conspiracy theorists?

We expect to be fully operational with the certification of version 1.0 of the Open Voting software. Meanwhile, our demonstration software should be ready in February 2004.

You know what the say about buying a version with .0 in it?

I tried using Open Office which is an Open Source version of MS Office and gave up, it was too buggy.

I’ve said several times I don’t have a problem with Open Source. Maybe the next time? But count me out if there’s paper involved.

Please take me out of my misery, is this all a wind up?

Sparks

Originally posted by williamgrogan
But its not if someone has replaced the software with a fraudulent copy that prints one thing and stores another. If the voter knows that he can be shown a vote for candidate A, which is what his intention was, but its logged as a vote for candidate B then it does not assure him.

Actually, he now knows that there is at least an immutable paper record showing he voted for candidate A. So if a recount is called, he knows his vote will be accurately tallied. And if there is a serious bug or corruption, it will be found out.

Furthermore a bug that prints OK but records incorrectly say 50 times in one booth would not be detectable in a constituency even with a count of the paper as from previous counts we know they are not accurate enough.

Not true. It might be time-consuming to find out, but it would be found out. That's not an issue for debate, that's black and white fact. The votes are printed on paper here and I have a copy of the totals tallied here and you just compare them. It's tedious - not impossible.

I think the ordinary voter thinks e-voting is overdue.

Maybe. Maybe not. I'd certainly agree if you were talking about me. But not with this particular system, which I believe has serious technical flaws and should not be used.

The event you describe does not prove “there is a serious bug”.

On the contrary. I'm describing a situation where the VVAT does not match the voter's selection. If that happens, there is a bug somewhere in the system that prevents the vote being entered. And that is, by definition, a serious bug.

As it is almost certain that 1,000,000 printouts will not equal 1,000,000 screens or tally with the count and such a conflict would cause a problem of confidence you do not use VVAT.

That is a patently false statement. If you use a photocopier to make a thousand copies, you do not expect 998 copies of your document and two copies of some other document.
We are talking here about a printout. Not a complicated matter.

I do not believe it’s possible at present to create a software SYSTEM that is 100.000% reliable. However, I do believe that the E-Voting as proposed by the government is almost certain to be far more reliable than the present system.

And I'm saying that it is not possible for anyone outside Nathean Technologies or Nedap to make that statement with any form of authority whatsoever as they do not have access to the source code.

Open Source is a curate’s egg. It has many advantages but also many disadvantages. Obvious disadvantages are that it is not commercially viable AND everyone gets to see the source.

Firstly, this is not meant to be commercially successful software. This is the software equivalent to a "social bus route". It performs a necessary social function and is not expected to turn a profit.
Secondly, everyone getting to see the source code is a good thing, especially in this case.

96%? 97% of computers in the world now run Windows.

That's not even true in the desktop computer world, where the percentage is in the low 80s to high 70s, the remainder running Mac OS variants, Linux and assorted other *nixes. And in the real world, 4-bit and 8-bit embedded systems running on 30-year-old chip designs are the largest group of computers and they don't even have operating systems for the most part. Then there's mainframes, other large iron and a few dozen other categories.
We might see Windows a lot - that doesn't mean it's the standard.

Unix is a minor player. (Incidentally, MS was developed in a garage by a college drop out, maybe that’s why the college people hate it?)

That statement is so grossly inaccurate as to make me question your qualifications to make statements on technical computing topics.

So the source that was put on a PC was not a hackers as one would imagine. It was a valid program put on by a valid employee but not OK’ed by the oversight committee. Wrong but these type of things happen in manual counting systems.

Very, very wrong. This was the electronic equivalent of all the ballot boxes being collected by an anonymous party after the poll, counted in secret, and the results announced as offical without any oversight.
Why? Because noone knew what the source code was on the day of the election, meaning noone knew how the votes were counted or stored.

The above doesn’t impress me, is it supposed to?

No, it's meant to point out that evoting systems are not in some manner uncorruptable, nor are the people who build them.

[quote[The 3 memos (if not fraudulent and not irrelevant)[/quote]
Diebold has filed a lawsuit stating that those are real and offical memos and demanding their return.

only indicate that password protection is absent once access is gained to the DB. So what? There are no passwords on a ballot box.

No, there aren't. There are Gardai instead.
However, in the electronic system, the DB was accessed remotely without detection using a radio modem during the election. And at that point, there was no security in the system whatsoever.
Given that one of the lead programmers had a criminal record of corruption, it is nowhere even close to paranoid to point out that this could be done purposely for the purposes of rigging an election for profit.

Your argument in a nutshell is that these memos indicate that security is not 100%.

Correct. But the system the government is introducing here is very similar to the diebold system - and the government is trying to introduce primary legislation preventing results being challanged, as if the system is 100% secure and reliable, and also preventing the introduction of a VVAT, again as if the system was 100% secure and reliable.

Did anyone say computers are perfect?

No. However they don't make simple mathematical mistakes every once in a while. A checksum algorithim does not get the answer wrong every one in a million times at random. That's the point of a checksum algorithim. A checksum coming out wrong, therefore, is evidence of change in the file, whether by media corruption or by deliberate alteration.
And when that file is the record of all votes cast, that is a big deal.

Context is essential, it separates the scare mongering from reality. There is no difference between the web site you linked to and any anti-anything web site. They trawl up as much stuff as they can find. Most of its rubbish.

Yet in this case, it's undisputed fact by all but Diebold, who cannot be said to be impartial.

Look, here are the facts. Diebold and Nedap both work on similar architectures. Diebold has shown serious security flaws in the past, in both its programming and its people. Nedap has not shown that it is any better - in fact Nedap's architectural review revealed the same flaws seen in the Diebold systems.

That's it. That's the black and white of the matter.
And it's too serious a process to trust to a flawed system with no oversight.

The “Rob-Georgia” thing is rubbish. I came across it before. There is an assumption among the “conspiracy theory fans” that the file name means “to rob the voters of Georgia of their votes.” No evidence for this. Its as impressive as the Mars Face was to the Looney Tunes Brigade.

Actually the name "Rob-Georgia" came about because the election was in Georgia and the programmer was called Robert.
But there you go.

Mistakes such as storing 40,000 files (the 40,000 is impressive isn’t it?) happen all the time and always will, so what’s new. This is being used to indicate that Diebold are particularly careless. A company founded 120 years with 13,000 staff and still signing contracts for ten’s of millions of dollars as recently as this year cannot be all bad.

Sorry, you can't say that. Diebold's actions were a breach of several federal laws. You can't just say "oh well, life's like that" and dismiss it.

The CEO of Diebold is hardly so open about his links to Bush if he has something to hide.

Indeed? And you think there's nothing wrong with the man who builds the voting machines being financially tied to an election candidate?
You must be very trusting if so.

It’s patriotic in America to give money to politicians.

You'd better point that out to the people who are noting that the companies who were awarded the contracts in Iraq were the ones who contributed the largest sums to Bush's campaign fund.
Financial ties are not considered to be insignificant in the US any more than they are here.

You will get all the same sort of illogical, disjointed, trying-to-connect-things-that-are-not-connected arguments on any activist site. They even say it’s an activist site. “The News for Nerds” site you refer to is appropriately titled.

The thing about it though, is that they're debating the importance and implications of an acknowleged fact. You may disagree with their conclusions - but you cannot simply dismiss the facts.

Sparks

The notion that a computer programmer will examine someone else’s code and say, “Wow! Great! I would never have thought of that. The guy was a genius, and I’m really impressed with the comments!”, is far less likely than me winning the Lotto, and I don’t even play it.

Really? Because that's how Linux was written.
That's how the entire GNU unix code base is maintained.
In fact, that's how the open source software mechanism works.

The only thing you have proved is that you are a conspiracy theorist and that nothing mankind does is perfect and I agree with you fully.

Then you haven't read what I've written.

Re The Australian Open Source System
I would have thought that the opening paragraph would frighten the daylights out of you conspiracy theorists?

No, because if you read the rest of the article, you'd note that it's on a set of secured systems, running an open source OS, with open source designs for the hardware and software, and without external network access. In other words, anyone can see how it works and what it does and it's above board.

You know what the say about buying a version with .0 in it?

Yes. By the way, did you know that the june election would be the first time that that particular piece of Nedap software will be used? Ever? That's not just version 0.something, it's an alpha build.

I tried using Open Office which is an Open Source version of MS Office and gave up, it was too buggy.

Funny, that's why I stopped using microsoft windows. I was tired of it crashing several times every day.

BTW, guess what platform Nedap's software runs on?

Anyone want to start a pool on how many times the BSOD is seen on polling day?

I’ve said several times I don’t have a problem with Open Source. Maybe the next time? But count me out if there’s paper involved.

Actually, you've spent most of that post rubbishing it.

Please take me out of my misery, is this all a wind up?

No, it's not. I'm serious about my opinion and I'm willing to support it in debate, as I have been trying to do here for the last few days with you.

You, however, don't seem to grasp the fundamentals of the problem very well, and have not yet answered even one direct question put to you.

williamgrogan

I didn't "rubbish" open source, I simply pointed out some downsides to balance your upsides. You have given up using MS Office? I think that says a lot about your view of reality. How many people in the world now use it? 500,000,000? I have the latest version on XP and it hasn’t crashed once in 6 months and I use it continuously. (The one major complaint I have is the limit on the spreadsheet rows.) Even if it had crashed, provided that it didn’t do so too often, it’s acceptable. The lead in a pencil breaks too. As I have said a number of times, there is this bizarre attitude that some people have with computers that they must be perfect. Absolutely nothing else is, but computer have to be “or we cannot trust them”. Illogical!

There is no evidence that eVoting (OK I agree this looks better than E-Voting) is unreliable.

Remember the point of this thread is my contention that pro-VVAT is the same as the Face on Mars, the JFK conspiracy theories, the anti-MMR, the anti-Fluoridation, anti-NP, anti-GMO's etc........ If you examine all these positions they have the same “ingredients” and pro-VVAT is no different.

The notion that a computer programmer will examine someone else’s code and say, “Wow! Great! I would never have thought of that. The guy was a genius, and I’m really impressed with the comments!”,

……… and then what? He changes the code. QED!

PS

I do appreciate you taking the trouble to debate the issues. I have learnt a lot of interesting stuff in the last two weeks. There exists another urban myth I wasn’t aware of for one.

PPS

Where are the usual suspects in this debate

PPS I missed the fact that you had two posts. I'll reply further tonight.

williamgrogan

So if a recount is called

So now we come to the next class of problems with VVAT, how is this controlled?

At a guess 90% of the candidates are eliminated, a lot of dissatisfied potential objectors.

PS

There is an ongoing "reasonableness" test with all voting systems, opinion polls. There are very accurate. In fact NEARLY as accurate as the actual paper voting!

bminish

Originally posted by williamgrogan

There is no evidence that eVoting (OK I agree this looks better than E-Voting) is unreliable.

You obviously haven't looked at ANY of the links provided by sparks in relation to the Diebold system, in the US.

One of the links is an analysis of the source code based on bits of source that have been leaked into the public domain, there are many worrying issues and code seems to have been written without any real though as to security or data integrity.

Another link shows how to vote many times instead of just once using a simple and completely undetectable hack.

there is also an exploration on how counting can be manipulated and how the system can be persuaded to show one name but actually record a vote for another.

How can you assure me that the Nedap system isn't open to similar exploits ?

.Brendan

williamgrogan

I have read them all and many more besides and they amount to nothing, the same as all these scaremongering anti-technology conspiracy sites. Did you read the one re Checksum problem being reported and my example of something similar. Does this not give you food for thought?

Too busy now, will reply tonight or tomorrow.

PS

Michael Jackson is an alien.

bminish

Originally posted by williamgrogan
I have read them all and many more besides and they amount to nothing, the same as all these scaremongering anti-technology conspiracy sites. Did you read the one re Checksum problem being reported and my example of something similar. Does this not give you food for thought?

Too busy now, will reply tonight or tomorrow.

PS

Michael Jackson is an alien.

There's a lot more wrong with Diebold systems than checksum errors, I would feel reasonably confident that I could on the basis of the information that is out in the public domain vote more than (a lot more than! ) once on Diebold voting machines

How do we KNOW that the Nedap machines don't have similar large scale vulnerabilities. Offer me some proof but please stop asking me to accept your word for it!

The ONLY reason that the proposed Mercuri VVAT won't work accurately with the Irish system is the insistence on retaining our old partial PR system, with an electronic voting system, I can see no reason to do this (except of course if one was not going to select completely at random.. )

It would however allow for gross software errors to be uncovered, there is no other proposal on the table right now to catch any possible lost votes. it's simply not good enough

.Brendan

Sparks

Originally posted by williamgrogan
I didn't "rubbish" open source, I simply pointed out some downsides to balance your upsides.

None of which were in any way relevant to the eVoting task, and many of which were so seriously inaccurate as to call into question your knowlege of the subject.

You have given up using MS Office? I think that says a lot about your view of reality.

No, it says that I have no use for it. The main tasks I have to perform on my computer are writing (for which I use LaTeX as it's the research standard), and coding (for which Office is of no use anyway). Web browsing via Opera and email via mutt. The OS is linux. I have no need for anything else, so I use the most appropriate tools.
If that is a statement on my "view of reality", I believe it's a good one.

How many people in the world now use it?

That's an irrelevant question from the point of view of what I must do with my PC.

Even if it had crashed, provided that it didn’t do so too often, it’s acceptable.

As I have said a number of times, there is this bizarre attitude that some people have with computers that they must be perfect. Absolutely nothing else is, but computer have to be “or we cannot trust them”. Illogical!

Perfectly logical actually, it's just that you have different requirements. You need a desktop machine to use Office on. If it crashes, you reboot and lose at most five minutes of work. But that's a wholly different scenario to the majority of tasks performed in this world by computers. If, for example, your ABS braking system's embedded computer didn't work perfectly, the cost could be your life, and so there's a higher standard demanded of that system. Likewise for fly-by-wire computer systems in aircraft. Likewise for computer systems in medical equipment. And the list is extensive.
And in eVoting systems, while noone's life is put in danger by a serious error or crash, our system of government is. As a result, there is a higher standard demanded of it in terms of security and transparancy. One, I add, which the Nedap system does not meet.
As to it's ability to run without crashing, it only has to be able to do that for polling day - but it must have safety features to recover from a failure on polling day as quickly as possible, and the system must not allow a failure to corrupt data.

The Nedap system has no such provisions.

There is no evidence that eVoting (OK I agree this looks better than E-Voting) is unreliable.

There most certainly is, and I've presented the basic framework of that proof in the form of source documents and mainstream news articles.
You may ignore it if you wish: but do not claim any form of authoritative opinion on the matter if you do so.

……… and then what? He changes the code. QED!

That is not how the open source model works. Yes, he may change the code: but there is a moderator-style arrangement in place to prevent unreviewed changes.

Originally posted by williamgrogan
So now we come to the next class of problems with VVAT, how is this controlled?

In the same manner as the current paper ballot is controlled.

At a guess 90% of the candidates are eliminated, a lot of dissatisfied potential objectors.

On what basis would they be eliminated?

There is an ongoing "reasonableness" test with all voting systems, opinion polls. There are very accurate. In fact NEARLY as accurate as the actual paper voting!

While they may accurately predict trends, they cannot be used in this manner in all cases. In the last election several candidates were elected by very narrow margins, and many were elected after several recounts.
Besides which, opinion polls have no legal weight, and for a reason - they are run by private companies and not public sector authorities.

williamgrogan

A balanced article imho from the NY Times 28-02-04

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/28/politics/campaign/28VOTE.html?th

you have to register

some excerpts

The company has worked to fix all security issues that researchers have described, said David Bear, a Diebold spokesman. "Those things have not only already been addressed," he said, "they were implemented."

For more than a year, Diebold also has been fighting conspiracy theories popularized on the Internet that say its Jetsons-at-the-polling-place wares serve as cover for an ongoing effort to stuff electronic ballot boxes on behalf of the Republican Party.

Diebold executives, along with outside computer security experts who are seeking to fix the voting machines, say the conspiracy theories are bunk......

[WG]The following refers to another "episode" that is bandied about, the "most amazing upset since 1860" one...

The conspiracy talk took off not long after the November 2002 election here, when two Georgia Democrats, Gov. Roy Barnes and Senator Max Cleland, were defeated in upsets.

...

But even the state's most ardent Democratic officials say that while the races were particularly ugly the vote counts were accurate.

"Listen, I have looked at this election every which way," said Bobby Kahn, who is chairman of the state's Democratic Party and who served as Governor Barnes's chief of staff. "I would love to say that it was hacked. That's just not the case."