Tag: Voting
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California Study: Voting Machines Vulnerable; Worse to Come?
A major study of three e-voting systems, commissioned by the California Secretary of State’s office, reported Friday that all three had multiple serious vulnerabilities. The study examined systems from Diebold, Hart InterCivic, and Sequoia; each system included a touch-screen machine, an optical-scan machine, and the associated backend control and tabulation machine. Each system was studied…
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Woman Registers Dog to Vote, Demonstrates Ease of Fraud
A woman in Seattle registered her dog to vote, and submitted absentee ballots in three elections on the dog’s behalf, according to an AP story. The woman, Jane Balogh, said she did this to demonstrate how easy it would be for a noncitizen to vote. She put her phone bill in her dog’s name (“Duncan…
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My Supplemental E-Voting Testimony
Today I submitted supplemental written testimony, adding to my previous testimony from last week’s e-voting hearing before the House Administration Committee, Subcommittee on Elections. Today’s supplemental testimony is short, so I’ll just include it here. (The formatted version is available too.) Thank you for the opportunity to submit this supplemental written testimony. Some people have…
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Testifying at E-Voting Hearing
I’m testifying about the Holt e-voting bill this morning, at a hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on House Administrion, Subcommittee on Elections. I haven’t found a webcast URL, but you can read my written testimony.
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Protect E-Voting — Support H.R. 811
After a long fight, we have reached the point where a major e-voting reform bill has a chance to become U.S. law. I’m referring to HR 811, sponsored by my Congressman, Rush Holt, and co-sponsored by many others. After reading the bill carefully, and discussing with students and colleagues the arguments of its supporters and…
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How Computers Can Make Voting More Secure
By now there is overwhelming evidence that today’s paperless computer-based voting technologies have such serious security and reliability problems that we should not be using them. Computers can’t do the job by themselves; but what role should they play in voting? It’s tempting to eliminate computers entirely, returning to old-fashioned paper voting, but I think…
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Sarasota: Could a Bug Have Lost Votes?
At this point, we still don’t know what caused the high undervote rate in Sarasota’s Congressional election. [Background: 1, 2.] There are two theories. The State-commissioned study released last week argues that for the theory that a badly designed ballot caused many voters to not see that race and therefore not cast a vote. Today…
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Sarasota Voting Machines Insecure
The technical team commissioned by the State of Florida to study the technology used in the ill-fated Sarasota election has released its report. (Background: on the Sarasota election problems; on the study.) One revelation from the study is that the iVotronic touch-screen voting machines are terribly insecure. The machines are apparently susceptible to viruses, and…
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Sarasota: Limited Investigations
As I wrote last week, malfunctioning voting machines are one of the two plausible theories that could explain the mysterious undervotes in Sarasota’s congressional race. To get a better idea of whether malfunctions could be the culprit, we would have to investigate – to inspect the machines and their software for any relevant errors in…
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Why So Many Undervotes in Sarasota?
The big e-voting story from November’s election was in Sarasota, Florida, where a congressional race was decided by about 400 votes, with 18,412 undervotes. That’s 18,412 voters who cast votes in other races but not, according to the official results, in that congressional race. Among voters who used the ES&S iVotronic machines – that is,…