Voter IDs: Pros and Cons

by Bob Wilson / September 1, 2006
Original on OpEdNews [1]
Bob Wilson is a Coordinator and Executive Board member for Election Defense Alliance, and chairman of the Cook County branch of the Illinois Ballot Integrity Project.

Here's today's editorial supporting photo voter IDs in Illinois, along with my response to the Belleville News-Democrat.
Why not chip in with some thoughts of your own? Our News Release of 8-22-2006 is attached for some thought starters. The $922,000 is from a previous BN-D article last September about how Delaney praised the Fidlar (Diebold) sales rep for helping him select the Diebold AccuVote TSx. The no disabled voters used the machines is from a BN-D editorial this March after the primary. The estimates are my own from U.S. Census and voter regisration data. See here [1] for the original story on Ron Stephens' (R-102nd) press conference to announce his intention to introduce Voter ID legislation in the General Assembly.

E-mail: letters [at] bnd [dot] com / Sound-off: (618) 239-2799 / Mail: Letters: Belleville News-Democrat, 120 S. Illinois St., P.O. Box 427, Belleville, IL 62222-0427 / Or even better - call County Clerk Bob Delaney's office: (618) 277-6600 Ext. 2380.

A simple way to protect votes
Belleville News-Democrat Editorial / August 24, 2006

It's an idea so basic to the integrity of elections, we're surprised Illinois doesn't already do it: Require voters to produce a photo ID at the polls. State Rep. Ron Stephens, a Republican, was in Belleville this week stumping for its passage. Amazingly, his Democratic colleagues in Springfield have bottled up this legislation for three years now.

It's difficult to believe that anyone could anyone oppose an idea that would improve the public's confidence in the election process. Then again, this is Illinois, the state that made famous the saying, "Vote early and vote often." Guess Democrats don't want to do anything that might prevent that from happening. They're always looking for ways to get more people registered, but balk at ideas that ensure it's one vote per person.

There are exceptions. Bob Delaney, the St. Clair County clerk, said he supports the legislation. His election judges will ask for IDs at the polls this November, although for now compliance will be voluntary.

But more typical of Democrats is John Kurowski, the attorney for the East St. Louis election board. He trotted out the liberal line requiring IDs could disenfranchise the poor and minorities.

Please, how many people in the metro-east don't have a driver's license or some other government-issued ID card? Six, 20, 100? For those few registered voters who don't have an ID, someone can go to their house and take their picture.

Providing IDs for the few who don't have them makes a lot more sense than leaving our precious right to vote vulnerable to election fraud.

A Response to the Editor

From: Bob Wilson / To: letters [at] bnd [dot] com / Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2006 / Subject: Voter Photo ID

Editor:

How many voters don't have a photo ID in St.Clair County? Based on a state-wide estimate, approximately 570,000 or about 11% of Illinois voters don't have a photo ID. This is consistent with other states where estimates range from 5% to as high as 14%. The proof of the pudding of course is that a significantly higher percentage of voters don't have a photo ID in predominantly poor and black neighborhoods, thus making the ID requirement unduly burdensome on the poor, elderly and disabled. We estimate, for example that the number of voters without ID in St. Clair County and East St. Louis at approximately 9.3 percent of the 170,000 registered voters or about 15,800, far from the six, 20 or 100 you estimate.

Your idea of providing such IDs at no cost, even if the proposed statute were to be found constitutional, has some merit. After all, County Clerk Bob Delaney's office could perform this service. Even if it cost $5 to provide a photo ID, that would be less than $80,000, certainly a better use of taxpayer dollars than the $922,000 his office spent on touch-screen voting devices that not one single disabled voter used in the March 21st primary. Come to think of it, why not pull the plug on the unsecure, unreliable and inaccurate touch-screen voting machines and send someone out with a ballot to the homes of he disabled? After all, how many can there be, six, 20, 100?

Bob Wilson
Chairman, Cook County Chapter
Illinois Ballot Integrity Project
wilson [at] ballot-integrity [dot] org

An Exit Strategy for Electronic Voting (Bruce O'Dell)

By Bruce O'Dell

Original Article at
OpEdNews.com [2]

Even though there are fundamental technical considerations which should rule out use of electronic vote tallying technology, some of my Information Technology colleagues are still trying hard to salvage it (see, for example, the web site of the research group called
ACCURATE [3]).

When it comes to electronic voting technology, we do not need a better mousetrap – we need an exit strategy.

I've done my best to explain why, in detail, elsewhere [4] – but the main points bear repeating.

Voting systems are national defense systems (!) deserving the highest level of protection. Undetected compromise of our nation's voting systems is equivalent to our being invaded and occupied by a foreign power, since the American people lose control of their lives and destinies in either case - except that "coup by covert election manipulation" occurs under the reassuring guise of business as usual. I am ashamed that my profession has enabled voting systems to be deployed with mechanisms inadequate to protect mere financial transactions - much less, to safeguard the foundation of our national sovereignty.

Voting is inherently hard to protect. All the conventional techniques for electronic auditing of transactions rely on strong proofs of identity and complete transparency. We can conduct electronic financial transactions well enough that embezzlement is the exception and not the rule because all counterparties to a financial transaction are required to provide strong, legal proof of identity to the others, all parties to electronic financial transactions are strongly motivated to verify accuracy of results, and the laws regulating resolution of financial disputes are mature. None of these conditions apply to voting.

Voting is private and anonymous. You cannot provide a voter with a record of her transaction sufficient to prove how she voted after the fact (or you enable sale of votes, coercion and a host of other problems...). But if you do not provide such an unambiguous receipt, all that electronic vote-auditing protocols can do is simply enshrine a computer's assertion that it recorded your touch on a screen or your mark on an optical scan ballot as you intended.

Any program that generates an electronic audit trail -- no matter how complex -- can easily be programmed to consistently lie about what truly happened when your choice was presented to the machine for tallying. Electronic auditing of electronic vote tallying simply shifts the issue of trust from one suspect set of software to another.

Can we ensure that machines count our votes as cast?
Our only recourse to ensure correct electronic tallying is to generate an anonymous non-volatile receipt of the voter's choices, verified by the voter, retained by electoral authorities, and always audited - by hand - after the fact. And even this approach has limitations; for VVPATs (Voter-verified paper audit trails) there is ample evidence that many people do not actually "verify" their "PAT." Optical scan ballots are a much more desirable paper record.

OK - if we always have to audit the electronic tally, how should we do it?
The conventional approach is to have election insiders audit 100% of the vote in a few percent of the precincts, days or weeks after the election, in private beyond public view. If, of course, there are any paper ballot records to audit.

But as reported irregularities in Ohio in 2004 [5] reveal, this approach is both inaccurate and highly vulnerable to gaming.

In response, Jonathan Simon, Steven Freeman, Josh Mitteldorf and I have just published a paper [6] that recommends nothing less than a 10% in-precinct hand count of all paper ballot records to be done by the public and on election night, everywhere we allow electronic tallying. This will provide 99% certainty of detecting errors or deliberate manipulation, regardless of their source, that affect 1% or more of the official electronic tally. Nothing less will provide the indisputable statistical rationale to enable candidates to actually dispute a tainted election in a toxic political environment like the one we find ourselves mired in at the moment.

But all this begs the question: if we have to always hand-audit electronic vote tallies . . . then what, exactly, is the point of electronic tallying?

Requiring electronic voting to enable accommodation of voters with disabilities is a red herring – cheaper, better, non-computerized alternatives [7] already exist.

And so we advocate a 10% hand count in 100% of the precincts only as a transitional step in an exit strategy for electronic voting. Because I for one firmly believe that wherever and whenever we actually do start hand-counting ballot records in public on election night, we will find such a catalog of horrors, such unconscionable sloppiness, such pervasive backdoor manipulation of the electronic tally that the American people will rise up and demand that we take back control of our elections into our own hands – and cast and count
our paper ballots ourselves.

I'm not accusing my colleagues – such as Avi Rubin, Director of ACCURATE – who are working to salvage electronic voting of "being on the take." In fact I commend their hard work to expose the risks of electronic voting. But, on the other hand, as a technology professional I would refuse to work on electronic voting systems because, for all of the above reasons, I believe it to be a violation of the professional code of ethics of the Association of Computing Machinery, the world's largest and oldest computer society - of which I am a member.

The ACM Code of Ethics [8] states in part:

"Ethical tensions can best be addressed by thoughtful consideration of fundamental principles, rather than blind reliance on detailed regulations. These Principles should influence software engineers to consider broadly who is affected by their work; to examine if they and their colleagues are treating other human beings with due respect; to consider how the public, if reasonably well informed, would view their decisions; to analyze how the least empowered will be affected by their decisions; and to consider whether their acts would be judged worthy of the ideal professional working as a software engineer. In all these judgments concern for the health, safety and welfare of the public is primary; that is, the 'Public Interest' is central to this Code."

I say again: "to consider how the public, if reasonably well informed, would view their decisions." According to Zogby's latest poll [9], the American people, if properly informed, are hardly likely to continue to tolerate secret elections, run by insiders, "certified" by "experts", and tallied by machines. I prefer to stand with the people.

And again: The issue at hand is the integrity of the systems that grant sovereignty over the world's largest economy and only superpower military. There are overwhelming indications those systems can be and likely have been hijacked in pursuit of a radical agenda contrary to the wishes of the majority of the American people.

Beyond the technical considerations that preclude placing our trust in electronic vote tallying is the most important principle of all:
We, the people, have the inalienable right to run our own elections.

My colleagues working to salvage electronic voting are free to disagree. But I wonder why such a talented group is preoccupied with inventing a better voting mousetrap when the people are fully capable of running our elections in the absence of the inappropriate technologies that have precipitated our election integrity crisis.

In fact, there are a host of other, far more pressing problems that confront us technologists – consider that the public is just now waking up to one fact that security insiders have known for some time: the barbarians are at the gates [10] of the internet. These are the kinds of problems that should demand our urgent attention so that we can protect and serve the public, who have become almost totally dependent on the technologies we provide them.

Author's Bio: Bruce O'Dell is a self-employed information technology consultant with more than twenty five years experience who applies his broad technical expertise to his work as an election integrity activist. He lives just outside Minneapolis, Minnesota, and shares a love of good books with his wife - and her beautiful garden, with their talkative cat.

LINKS to sources referenced in this article:

The ACCURATE project
http://accurate-voting.org/faq/

O'Dell on Auditability
http://electiondefensealliance.org/auditability

Cuyahoga recount indictments
http://www.cleveland.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/1144312870224340.xml

HR550 Audit Accuracy paper.pdf
http://electiondefensealliance.org/files/

VotePAD
http://www.vote-pad.us/index.asp

Also see Equalivote
http://www.equalivote.com/

ACM Code of Ethics
http://www.acm.org/serving/se/code.htm

Zogby Poll
http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1163

Scientific American article on Internet security
http://tinyurl.com/g47wg

Auditability (Bruce O'Dell)

What does "auditability" really mean for elections?

How can we know that the output of computerized voting devices can be trusted?
Whenever computers are used to cast or tally votes, there are inherent risks that must be mitigated:

• Computer software is written to perform as specified, but errors still may occur.
• Whenever computer systems process transactions of high value to society, there is temptation for a malicious programmer to include covert functionality that causes software to deliberately perform other than intended, for personal or financial gain.

Limitations of testing computers

It is well known in the information technology profession that computers are ultimately "black boxes" - you cannot actually see what bits are really present and executing; and all methods to attempt to do so require other software that itself has the same problem, in an infinite regress. There is no workaround.

The only way to know what is running in a computer at any given moment is to observe its behavior: give all possible inputs, measure its corresponding outputs, and then check to see if the inputs and outputs you observe match the specification.

If computer software is always tested before use, why bother to produce an “audit trail”?

Unfortunately, you really have no guarantee that a given computer program's behavior as measured, say, at 10:00 AM will have any relationship to the same program's execution at noon. Computers have clocks and can tell time, and can easily be programmed to behave differently at different times, on different dates – or under an endless variety of different circumstances.

When it comes to systems processing high-value transactions of interest to potential criminal embezzlers - like money or votes - the inherent limitations of point-in-time behavioral testing make it unacceptably risky. Some kind of computer behavioral monitoring system is required that can record a vulnerable system's inputs and corresponding outputs while it is processing critical transactions. This would provide all the information needed to enable a human auditor or another automated auditing system to spot processing errors or manipulation of the transactions.

How are computerized financial transactions protected?

One reason why electronic financial transactions are as secure as they are (by which I only mean that embezzlement is the exception and not the rule) is that while financial transactions are private, they are hardly anonymous; you need to prove your identity to all the other counterparties involved. Each counterparty gets and keeps their own independent records of the transaction, all counterparties are strongly motivated to spot discrepancies and compare their records with others, while procedures relating to resolution of financial disputes are mature.

Why are voting systems so difficult to protect?

Unfortunately voting is a private and anonymous transaction, so conventional counterparty-based financial auditing mechanisms are simply impossible. Although some computer scientists feel they've identified some all-electronic means of auditing the accuracy of electronic vote totals, ultimately there is no reliable means to do so for the end-to-end voting process. Essentially, every all-electronic auditing scheme records just the voting software's assertion that Voter X voted for "Smith for Governor". At the moment of creating the electronic audit record, the computer could be programmed to electronically assert you input “Smith for Governor" even though you actually input "Jones for Governor". Every all-electronic auditing scheme, no matter how elaborate, would from that point on then simply record that lie with every appearance of the truth.

The only way you can dispute that kind of an electronic lie is with some kind of independent, tangible, write-one-time-only receipt that could be used as a proof you really voted for Jones. But this last step in the verification chain is prohibited - for a host of good reasons, including voter intimidation/extortion and vote-selling. So the best we can do is create an anonymous receipt that says the equivalent of "Someone Voted for Jones", to have the voter verify the accuracy of that assertion, and then deposit it with the electoral authorities, who must retain that record in support of possible auditing or recounting.

Any all-electronic means of auditing electronic voting is a waste of money, and all-electronic auditing methods that are claimed to be reliable are actually unpatched security vulnerabilities.

How can paper vote records be auditable in practice?

But once you turn to paper vote records - either VVPAT scrolls or optical scan ballots - "auditability" takes on a whole new set of dimensions and must be assessed in terms of its purpose: to detect or deter both vote tallying errors and outright manipulation.

The risks of error and covert manipulation are inherent to the use of computer software. Human nature being what it is, those risks are ever-present in all systems that process high-value transactions - especially those involving money or voting. So for "auditability" to have any meaning in such systems, auditing must always be performed.

To be usable as an audit mechanism, both the accuracy and integrity of any paper record must also be assured.

Accuracy of paper vote records

Accuracy means that every voter has actually checked that the paper record accurately records their intent. Needless to say, this does not always occur; regardless of anything else we do with the ballot paper, the tally can never be known to a greater accuracy than the rate at which a voter accurately verifies their intent. I would expect paper ballots to have much higher accuracy than VVPATS since in that case the audit record is the same thing as the actual vote-casting "device"; ballots inherently require a lot of scrutiny by the voter, almost certainly more than is typically expended in checking a VVPAT.

Integrity of paper vote records

To ensure integrity, no one must be able to alter, delete, or substitute paper ballot records after they are verified by the voter. Immediately after the election, traditional paper-based audit and control concerns take precedence. In general, the more time passes since creation and the further it travels from point of origin, the more risk there is of manipulation or destruction of paper records. The key consideration becomes the integrity of the chain of custody of paper records - who has had access to the ballots, and under what conditions?

How can you prove your belief about the integrity of your paper records, given that paper technology is also vulnerable to manipulation, and there are also very high potential rewards for undetected alteration of paper vote records?

Best practices and practical limitations

Unfortunately, there is no such thing as perfect security; the best we can do is mitigate the risks as best we can.

In recognition of this inherent problem, the Canadian system of counting paper ballots in-precinct on election night - in concert with their absentee/early voting procedure - is highly secure. The paper flow is always under observation, and ballots are immediately counted in front of multiple adversarial counterparties - the political party representatives.

Admittedly, even rigorous paper-handling processes are not perfectly secure - but on the other hand, in the last 600 years of general use of paper records, we have figured out some pretty good paper-based audit procedures. Yet I doubt that many jurisdictions in America handle paper election records with the level of custodial care that we find, say, in handling real estate collateral in the mortgage-backed securities market, much less in Canadian elections.

So as a practical matter, I'd have to conclude that simply having a VVPAT offers ultimately no assurance of practical "auditability" - the records in the field are only as accurate as the rate at which people actually verify them, and with the passage of time are increasingly unlikely to have a clear, secure chain of custody. The same applies to optical scan ballots.

Practical barriers to effective auditing

Worse yet, there major impediments to "auditability" even when VVPATs or optical scan ballots are recounted or audited after the fact - wherever recounts are still allowed, that is. Since paper records are typically not recounted unless margins are very close, brazen theft would be rewarded in practice. No candidate losing by a healthy margin wants to challenge an election and force a recount. Political culture being what it is in America, those candidates would quickly get labeled as "sore losers" who "waste the public's money and the government's time" on pointless recounts, who use "conspiracy theories" to compensate for their inability to admit they lost.

Even when they do occur, recent experiences in Ohio and Washington state clearly reveal fundamental flaws in the both the approach and execution of present-day recounts. Recounts as currently legally chartered are "broken" and existing spot-audit protocols are subject to the same limitations, as well. So what can we do?

Mandatory in-precinct auditing of vote records

If paper vote records are only effectively "auditable" to the extent they are accurate and intact and actually audited, I believe the best approach, short of fully hand-counted paper ballots, is mandatory in-precinct auditing of the paper records with corresponding protocols to secure absentee and early voting.

Recent research shows that an audit of a small percent of the ballots in all precincts is far superior to auditing all of the ballots in a small percentage of precincts.

Is Holt Reformable? (Nancy Tobi)

With HR. 550 being the legislation with the most steam and some high profile supporters to boot, is there any will to work towards amending it in committee? At the state level, I've certainly seen entire bills completely revised so that by the time they have passed they look nothing like the bill they started out as.

The only bill that should be considered at the national level should address the two burning issues facing our election administration:

1) HAVA deadlines and DOJ enforcers, which are creating undue pressure upon our national election officials to make bad decisions

2) Paper ballots should be the baseline for any election system, and the official count of record.

Get those two things dealt with and out of the way, and we can start working on the rest of the mess the Feds have created.

ARE WE BETTER OFF NOW AFTER HAVA?

Holt revised could look something like this:

1) The Help America Vote Act is amended to suspend all January 2006 deadlines pending full investigation and resolution thereof of monies distributed by the EAC and spent by the States for electronic and computerized voting equipment, including an investigation of the suitability of that equipment for our national elections and the suitability of the corresponding agreements made between vendors of that equipment and their purchasers, when such agreements should appropriately reflect minimum national security protocols.

2) The Department of Justice will cease all activities relating to enforcement of the Help America Vote Act unless such activities are related to #1 above.

3) No voting machine or device shall be used in any election unless it reads the voter's choice on a paper ballot, which has been marked with the human hand, or for persons with disabilities, with an assistive marking device, in a manner that is verifiable to the voter.

4) A paper ballot is defined as the original printed ballot that displays all the voter options and which, with exceptions made as defined above for persons with disabilities, is marked by the human hand to reflect the voter's choices.

5) In recounts, when counting the ballots, the [insert title of state or local official responsible for recounts] shall visually inspect each ballot. No mechanical, optical, or electronic device shall be used for the counting of ballots.

Stop the Executive Branch from Taking Over our Elections: Amend or End HR 550

What's wrong with the Holt Bill in three easy bullets
Common Cause, MoveOn.org, TrueMajority, VerifiedVoting.org, and many other large election reform groups are pushing - and pushing hard - for passage of HR550 (the Holt Bill), national legislation aimed to amend the Help America Vote Act. The bill is being sold as a way to put "auditable paper trails" into national law. Sounds like a great idea. But many activists disagree with the approach to support "paper trails" that might be audited when what we want are real paper ballots that are - not might be - counted.
The other problem with HR550 is that it is about much more than paper trails. Read below the dangerous details that the groups pushing for passage of HR550 "as written" aren't talking about.
The democratic processes of the American Republic are based on decentralized power. Centralized power led to the American Revolution. Centralized power is the antithesis to a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
1. Centralization of Executive Power—White House Control over Counting the Votes: HR550 extends beyond the existing expiry date the power and authority of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), establishing a Presidential Commission authorized to control the counting of votes in every election--federal, state,and local--in the nation.
2. Centralization of Executive Power—Crony Appointments: The potential for stacking of the EAC is evident in the scenario already played out under the current Administration. In early 2006, the Bush White House made numerous recess appointments, putting political cronies into positions of power and authority without any Congressional oversight or checks and balances. Of the eight recess appointments made on January 4, 2006, three were Commissioners to the Federal Election Commission. Two of those appointed Commissioners are known for their opposition to voting rights and clean elections. The third is a political crony of Senate Minority Leader Reid of Nevada. (Nevada is now positioned to take a lead role in the Democratic presidential nomination process. For this privilege, Nevada has promised to play the nomination process by Party
rules, financed by the Casino industry.)
3. Centralization of Executive Power—Regulatory Authority: Federal regulatory authority means the federal entity preempts state and local authorities. The EAC was created as an advisory commission with one exception: it was granted regulatory authority over the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). The EAC has been steadily positioning and even suing to assert its regulatory authority in other areas under its domain. Even if it does not succeed through litigation, the EAC could, with the insertion of a single line of text in ANY congressional act, become regulatory. This is how the FEC gained regulatory powers. A regulatory EAC means that a Presidential Commission—potentially stacked with political cronies—would have legal decision making and enforcement power over the following areas, for every state in the nation:

• Which voting systems are approved for use in our elections
• Who counts the votes in every election
• How votes are counted in every election
• How recounts are administered and how their outcomes are determined

A recent editorial in the New York Times, entitled "Strong Arming the Vote" (August 3, 2006) describes how the Department of Justice under the Bush Administration has been heavily involved in partisan ploys to negate necessary checks and balances in election practices. HR 550, if passed as written, will establish a whole new arm of Executive power with dangerous authority to subvert the entire democratic process of elections that supports our system of government. It would result, in effect, in a bloodless coup.
People often ask, so what DO you support?
Here's an amended bill that might gain grassroots support:
We, the grassroots, can support the Holt Bill when it is amended to remove those dangerous provisions that centralize Executive power and expand Judicial election decision making authority. A Holt Bill that amends HAVA and provides real solutions to the problems in our election system need only include three items:

• The incontrovertible and legally defensible system of verifiable elections through the use of real, voter-marked and verifiable paper ballots (as distinguished from paper trails)
• The elimination of secret vote counting through the use of black box voting products.
• An extension of all HAVA mandated deadlines pending a complete independent investigation, analysis, and audit of HAVA monies distributed and spent on electronic voting systems, the outcomes thereof, with said investigation including information on the most advanced system of checks and balances for elections: hand counted paper ballots.

What can you do?
Contact your Congressional representatives [11]and tell them to amend or end HR550.

The Great Exit Poll Debate (Bruce O'Dell)

by Bruce O'Dell

I recently encountered yet another exit poll debate [12] and related discussion [13] and felt the need to comment once more on the topic of the 2004 exit poll controversy.

Limitations of the available exit poll data sure haven’t hampered the debate
Shortly before resigning from the organization I co-founded in 2004 to scientifically study the accuracy of US elections (US Count Votes) I reached the conclusion that all the available public exit poll data was consistent with widespread electoral fraud, with widespread bad polling techniques - and, worse yet, an unfathomable combination of the two.

My argument at the time: that publicly available exit poll data alone cannot in itself prove that the election of 2004, or certain elections in 2002, 2000, or 1996 were fraudulent, greatly displeased those who had concluded otherwise, including the pseudonymous "TIA" cited in Lindeman's article above.

The other conclusion that I reached - namely, when you look outside the narrow domain of exit polls, you see considerable support for the possibility of widespread covert vote manipulation - unfortunately failed to register with those on the opposite side of the exit poll debate from "TIA".

Limited data, limited conclusions
Lindeman and Liddle insist on application of the scientific method to first identify testable hypotheses, and then apply them to the available data. The problem with exit poll data is that the data available to the public is aggregated at the state level and is truly inadequate to test any hypothesis involving voting where it occurs - at the precinct level.

It is true that Liddle was given privileged access to E/M precinct-level data on a non-disclosure basis, and from that data drew a number of conclusions - that, unfortunately, could not be independently reproduced.

“Exit poll errors don’t correlate with precinct partisanship”… say what?
One of her key conclusions was that when looking at the secret precinct level exit poll data, exit poll errors relative to the official tally were not at all correlated with partisanship - as some studies by US Count Votes based on aggregate data seemed to indicate.

One model of vote fraud assumes "vote padding" occurs only in partisan strongholds where it can be more readily explained. Warren Mitofsky and others touted Liddle's finding as a rebuttal of any possibility of fraud, since exit poll discrepancies favoring Kerry happened everywhere to the same degree.

Somehow, all over the country, in Democratic and Republican strongholds and evenly-matched precincts as well, Kerry voters were overall just as equally inclined to take an exit poll more often than Bush voters (or, Bush voters were equally less likely inclined to participate in an exit poll - the data is consistent with either interpretation).

If there's been a coherent behavioral explanation for such oddly-uniform behavior, all across the country, on the part of people participating in an exit poll that is not a wordy restatement of "because", I've sure missed it - although I admit I largely stopped following the exit poll "debate" last summer.

Actually, the publicly released fraction of Liddle's secret precinct-level analysis was just as consistent with widespread covert vote manipulation as with inexplicable polling behaviors – or a mixture of the two..

The “Big Picture”
As long as we are confined to the narrow domain of exit polls and in the absence of full disclosure of the data, these questions were, are and will remain unanswerable. If we look outside the realm of exit polls briefly in order look at the "big picture", what do we see?

We now know for certain there are a host of systematic vulnerabilities in the all the components of electronic vote counting technology - DRE, op-scan, and tabulator - that tally the vast majority of the US vote. Given the nature of end-to-end voting systems and considering how they are "tested", deployed to the field, operated, and "examined" after the fact, widespread covert vote count corruption is certainly technically feasible.

Nor would it require a "massive conspiracy" to implement, even on a national scale. Changes to the master copy of voting software are replicated to thousands of machines in what amounts to an industrial process; the behavior of thousands of devices can be changed if just one person corrupts the master copy. Worse yet, all too many voting machines have built-in modems. These are stated to be secure by the equipment vendors, but the most secure military, government and industrial networks ban installation of modems, no matter how purportedly secure, due to the inherent security risks.

Reported vote-switching was not random
Setting aside the large number of reported irregularities involving purged registration rolls, provisional ballot irregularities, "dirty tricks", misallocation of voting equipment, and so on, consider just the one-sided nature of anecdotal reports of visible vote switching. For example, 87 of 94 vote-switching reports indicated voters who saw their DRE vote visibly switched from Kerry to Bush (in the EIRS sample).

Common sense would tell us hypothetical individuals perpetrating widespread covert vote count corruption would be highly motivated to do so in such a way as to remain undetected. One could argue that visible vote-switching is an argument against the systematic fraud hypothesis, or at the very least evidence of poor but innocent programming practices.

“Denial of service”?
But I believe that visible vote-switching could be a deliberate "denial of service" tactic. By "denial of service" I mean a deliberate tactic intended to make the voting process itself so slow and unreliable that voters simply give up and go home. Imagine the rationale for a covert vote manipulator to visibly switch the vote from one candidate to the other: if not noticed (often apparent only on the final "review your vote" screen), the vote is switched successfully. If it is noticed, the voter will probably panic - at least attempt to revote, possibly many times - slowing the entire voting process at that precinct. The net result, regardless of the final outcome, is to reduce the number of votes for candidate "A" in that location. The fact that the voting software itself is not accessible to independent review - and in fact can be programmed to modify itself at the end of the election - means that such an exploit would never be detectable after the fact, even if investigated.

The fact that visible vote switching occurring in multiple jurisdictions, involving software and equipment from multiple vendors, all overwhelmingly favored one candidate indicates to me that these were not random programming errors.

Given the highly charged partisan nature of the 2004 election, I simply find it impossible to believe that Bush supporters would not publicize incidents where their e-vote appeared to switch to Kerry. (Or were there "reluctant Bush vote-switching reporters" just like the exit poll "reluctant Bush participants"?)

Less-discussed aspects of exit polls
There’s a host of other exit poll topics, but eventually you hit the same wall with all of them: the detailed data you need to do a truly thorough analysis has not been made public The data required to audit the integrity of the official precinct level vote total is entirely missing or suspect due to the passage of time.

Therefore the possible explanations remain poor polling, official vote count manipulation, or a combination of both.

But there is more.

National exit poll sample
For example: why did the huge 2004 national exit poll sample of 12,000 voters (or 14,000, depending on what E/M data you believe) predict essentially the reverse of the official national popular vote? That large sample predicted a Kerry win by 3%, instead of a loss by 2.5%. Simple statistics tells us a sample so large is extremely unlikely to be that far off by chance; but once again, the explanation is either "bad polling", because Kerry voters behaved differently than Bush voters more or less exactly the same way everywhere, or "bad vote counting" - or a combination of both.

Southern state exit poll trends
Or, if you look at E/M's published state-level exit poll accuracy data, since 1992 you see a pattern in many southern states where exit polls are increasingly inaccurate. They appear to overstate the Democratic vote more and more in every election cycle - or there is an increasing pattern of inaccuracies in the official tally favoring Republicans. Explanation? Overeager African American exit poll responders? Shy Republicans? Vote count manipulation? Take your pick.

Recent trends: toward greater inaccuracy?
Or, consider that although since 1996 exit polls have become increasingly controversial, for decades in the US, election cycle after election cycle, exit polls produced no "surprises". E/M admits to one missed call which did not go public in the 1990s; some people speculate it was the 1996 Nebraska US Senate race, where Hagel unexpectedly did so well against Nelson - and of course, where the votes were tallied by a company, ES&S, that Hagel had such recent, close, unacknowledged ties to...

What happened to Florida exit polls in 2000?
Then there was the Florida debacle in 2000, now apparently firmly believed by everyone to be a problem with the exit poll; but Warren Mitofsky himself was quoted in 2001 as saying more or less "if I had the same data [exit poll and AP trial precinct actual results] I'd call the election the same way". It appears that the exit poll discrepancy was centered in a few counties - such as Palm Beach, Broward and Volusia - where people seem to have accurately told the exit pollsters how they thought they had voted. (See an absolutely fascinating article from the Columbia Journalism Review here [14]. )

What happened to nationwide exit polls in 2002?
After that embarrassing incident, VNS vowed to totally revamp for 2002. But depending on whom you believe, either poor internal computer programming at VNS took its toll (as reported here [15]) and/or poll taking technique reached its nadir; or multiple Senate and Governor races that went Republican in the official tally were actually called for the Democratic candidates in the exit poll (as reported here [16]).

No exit polls were officially released that year – in fact, VNS went out of business. It was replaced by Edison/Mitofsky and the National Election Pool, who once again vowed better polling techniques must and shall be put in place for 2004. And the result: the worst exit poll inaccuracy ever publicly admitted to.

How do we explain that sequence of events? Either exit polling, a once rather tame and predictable business with no notable track record of controversy has somehow become increasingly unreliable lately; or the vote count, with accuracy usually taken for granted overall with local exceptions, like Chicago in the 1960s, has inexplicably become increasingly unreliable lately - or, a combination of both.

So whether you conclude that it's human behavior or the integrity of the vote counting process that's changed appears to be a matter of personal preference, and to some extent, partisan ideology. If your candidate wins, most people don't complain too loudly. But it certainly appears that the rate of exit poll controversies is proportional to the degree to which increasingly sophisticated "black box" electronic voting equipment has been deployed in recent years.

...and what will happen in the future?
I admire Liddle and Lindeman, and certainly have enjoyed collaborating with them in the past. I believe some of their work has done a valuable public service by debunking overinflated, mathematically erroneous claims that exit poll data "proves" this or "disproves" that model of fraud. I think where I part company with them is in my willingness to contemplate the prospect of widespread vote count manipulation.

We have a voting system wide open to manipulation, and where there is every motivation, means and capability to evade detection - other than by the very imperfect means of exit and public opinion polling.

Under most circumstances, Liddle and Lindeman's insistence on avoiding a Type I error (i.e., concluding that systematic vote manipulation is occurring, when in fact it is not) would be commendable. But when the integrity of the American Republic is the "null hypothesis" it is a highly-misguided Type II error to insist the burden of rigorous proof lies totally with those attempting to show that severe election systems vulnerabilities are actually being exploited. Especially so, given that simple, secure and effective countermeasures, including election auditing, in-precinct hand counted paper ballots, and so on, are so readily available.

Computer security analysts presume all known vulnerabilities are actually being actively exploited and ethically feel required to immediately put counter measures in place, both to stop an exploit if it is occurring, and to keep it from happening if it has not. We do that because when protecting billions of dollars of other people's money (much less the fate of the American Republic) a Type I error of fixing or preventing a problem that may not have happened yet utterly pales in significance next to perpetuating a Type II error - failing to stop a crime in process.

That remains undone.

The Perfect Crime? (Bruce O'Dell)

We founded the Election Defense Alliance because we have no choice but to act as if human nature really is what it is, and therefore the appalling security vulnerabilities uncovered in every independently-examined component of the US electoral system in recent years are actually being exploited.

We presume that the prize - the ability to assume control of the world's largest procurement budget, allocate the spoils of a $12 trillion economy, and, not to mention, seize planetary military dominance - is too large and too tempting to go unclaimed, and further, that the individuals involved would be strongly motivated to evade detection, and to do everything possible to ensure their permanent hegemony.

Even if this has not happened yet, it could at any time.

The safeguards protecting the foundational protocol of the American Republic have been breached. Their restoration and its repair are matters of the highest possible urgency and importance.

Everything we think we know is wrong

The end-to-end election process has been allowed to break down and it's apparently in some people's best interests to keep it that way.

The assumption that automation is always better than paper is wrong. The assumption you actually know what's running in a computer - other than by observing all of its inputs and outputs - is wrong. The notion that most jurisdictions independently test their voting software to professional standards is wrong. The idea that any type of certification testing has any bearing on whether any particular voting machine in the field will function correctly during an election is also wrong.

The goofy idea that you can seriously patent any program that repeatedly and accurately adds one to a list of numbers (!) is wrong, and the notion of using that silly trade secret designation as a shield against independent inspection is wrong. Under current law, the cherished belief that there is a practical means of conducting a meaningful after-the-fact audit of election results is wrong in practice – almost no auditing of election results is done, and even when done, is seldom transparent to the public.

If all of this was occurring anywhere else but in election administration, there would be a massive public outcry and people would go to jail.

Electronic voting v. electronic gambling

There is a stunning contrast in how gaming systems are secured in comparison to voting systems. Even with relatively trivial amounts of money at stake, there is expensive, elaborate, stringent and intrusive ongoing independent random inspection of the hardware and software of the actual electronic gambling equipment in use at all casinos. In contrast, the details of the electronic vote tallying systems that determine who regulates a $12 trillion economy are considered trade secrets and so are legally shielded from independent inspection, and are never tested in any jurisdiction by anything approaching comparable rigor.

Despite the extreme measures taken to ensure the integrity of electronic gambling equipment, both vendors and casino insiders have successfully compromised electronic gambling equipment for financial gain.

Even though electronic election equipment is far less carefully protected than electronic gambling equipment, and knowing full well that successful manipulation of voting equipment yields far greater financial returns than manipulation of electronic gambling, any indication or evidence of systematic electronic election manipulation continues to be dismissed out-of-hand.

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

There are no safeguards

Worse yet, applying the same level of protection to election systems as gambling systems seems to be effectively impossible. You can always audit money, but auditing elections after the fact is highly problematic: voting systems as a practical matter are "presumed accurate". Any electronic vote tallying system - even one with some kind of paper trail - is never fully audited unless someone challenges the result. If the official result is not particularly close, there is no political will to challenge it. In other words: the bolder, the better.

A perfect crime?

Worst of all, an extraordinarily dangerous negative feedback loop is possible. A series of increasingly deceptive election results over time that remain undetected leads to the manufactured illusion of a shift in the underlying voting patterns of the electorate.

Here is the 'vision of the abyss': you can't take down the American Republic by force of arms; you need not just any coup, but one with "manufactured consent", that appears to be reflecting the will of the people. The manufactured reality becomes true insofar as we can perceive it, since exit polls and even the selection criteria for public opinion polls are eventually calibrated to official election results.

This is so disturbing, and could so easily be portrayed as paranoid ravings rather than a computer security risk assessment. But it is certainly technically feasible to pull off given enough time, and, God help us, could actually be well underway.