But it's important that this not just cause a muddle in peoples' brains--causing them to flee from politics ("they're all dishonest"), and not vote ("elections are all fixed"), and not fight back with
election reform!
at the local/state level!
Sounds like somebody ought to send Mr. Deeson a copy of...
"Myth Breakers: Facts About Electronic Elections" (2nd edition): www.votersunite.org
...and a few other things, say...
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Easy demo of how insecure voting machines are, by Republican hacker Chuck Herrin:
http://www.chuckherrin.com/hackthevote.htm----
or (and?)
Johns Hopkins report on insecurity of electronic voting: "Analysis of Electronic Voting System"
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00196.htm#5by Tadayoshi Kohno, Adam Stubblefield, and Aviel D. Rubin of the Information Security Institute, Johns Hopkins University, and Dan S. Wallach, Department of Computer Science, Rice University
July 23, 2003
From the Abstract:
"Our analysis shows that this voting system is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts.
"We highlight several issues including unauthorized privilege escalation, incorrect use of cryptography, vulnerabilities to network threats, and poor software development processes. For example, common voters, without any insider privileges, can cast unlimited votes without being detected by any mechanisms within the voting terminal. Furthermore, we show that even the most serious of our outsider attacks could have been discovered without the source code. In the face of such attacks, the usual worries about insider threats are not the only concerns; outsiders can do the damage. That said, we demonstrate that the insider threat is also quite considerable. We conclude that, as a society, we must carefully consider the risks inherent in electronic voting, as it places our very democracy at risk."
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or/and the UC Berkeley report...
Florida: 130,000 to 230,000 phantom votes for Bush--paper vs. electronic voting—in Florida's 3 biggest Democratic counties (Miami-Dade, Brower and Palm Beach); calls for investigation:
http://ucdata.berkeley.eduReport issued 11/18/04, by Dr. Michael Haut, & U.C. Berkeley Quantitative Methods Research Team; Haut is a nationally-known expert on statistical methods and member of the National Academy of Sciences and the U.C. Berkeley Survey Research Center
"UC Berkeley Research Team Sounds 'Smoke Alarm' for Florida E-Vote Count
Statistical Analysis - the Sole Method for Tracking E-Voting - Shows Irregularities May Have Awarded 130,000 - 260,000 or More Excess Votes to Bush in Florida
Research Team Calls for Investigation"
Press release:
http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/1118-14.htm----
or/and, articles like this...
http://www.news4jax.com/politics/3890292/detail.html Broward Vote-Counting Blunder Changes Amendment Result 11/4/04
"'The software is not geared to count more than 32,000 votes in a precinct. So what happens when it gets to 32,000 is the software starts counting backward,' said Broward County Mayor Ilene Lieberman."
"Putney said there is a lot of finger-pointing going on in the elections department. Lieberman blames ES&S Systems, which manufactures the software in question. She says they've known about the problem for at least two years because there was a Broward County mayoral race in which the same thing happened. She said nothing was done about it."
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or/and
sports commentator Jim Lampley's and Chic Trib columnist Robert Koehler's articles on election fraud (don't have the urls handy).
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or/and
Cite for Diebold CEO Wally O'Dell's letter about "delivering" Ohio to Bush/Cheney in '04, and for ES&S rightwing funding (don't have them handy).
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FLORIDIANS, TAKE ACTION! (I've got my hands full with California right now.)