By Luther Weeks on March 30, 2009
Despite opposition by the Secretary of the State, Susan Bysiewicz, TrueVoteCT members, CTVoters Count, and the League of Women Voters, HB-5903 was as voted out of the General Administration and Elections Committee unanimously today. The bill will allow members of the military to submit absentee votes electronically.
This not a wild theoretical concern: Ironically, CNN has just reported that the Chinese or others have software they have used to infiltrate critical computers around the world
Posted in CT, CT Law, Internet Voting
By Luther Weeks on March 29, 2009
[Easton Connecticut] is looking into using paper ballots for the upcoming budget referendums to save money.
We would recommend against all paper. Audits have shown that Connecticut election officials have difficulty counting even a few hundred ballots accurately. We also remember a very frustrating day observing the Easton election officials attempting to accurately count ballots for the audit after the November 2007 Municipal Election.
Posted in CT, CT Skulduggery and Errors
By Luther Weeks on March 25, 2009
“I follow the vote. And wherever the vote becomes an electron and touches a computer, that’s an opportunity for a malicious actor potentially to . . . make bad things happen.”
We agree with the agent that electronic voting can be compromised, but some details in the testimony are questionable.
Posted in Internet Voting, National
By Luther Weeks on March 24, 2009
Over 1000 blogs are celebrating Ada Lovelace day today: Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology…We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines.
Nobody makes a bigger mistake than (s)he who did nothing
because (s)he could only do a little
Posted in National | Tagged ALD09post
By Luther Weeks on March 19, 2009
Security firm Sophos reported this week that it received three samples of a trojan that was customized to run on Diebold-manufactured cash machines in Russia…
Posted in Electronic Vulnerability, Internet Security Issues, National
By Luther Weeks on March 18, 2009
“Today’s hearing confirmed one of my worst fears,” said Kim Alexander, founder and president of the non-profit California Voter Foundation. “The audit logs have been the top selling point for vendors hawking paperless voting systems. They and the jurisdictions that have used paperless voting machines have repeatedly pointed to the audit logs as the primary security mechanism and ‘fail-safe’ for any glitch that might occur on machines. To discover that the fail-safe itself is unreliable eliminates one of the key selling points for electronic voting security.”
In Connecticut we avoid these specific problems. But we don’t avoid similar problems.
Posted in Electronic Vulnerability, National, Skulduggery and Errors
By Luther Weeks on March 12, 2009
Close election in Fairfax County decided by reading computer memory.
Maybe it is all mostly accurate. But, without a voter verified paper record who knows? Maybe there is a lesson in here for us. Unfortunately, there is also a lesson here for those looking for ways to game the system in the future.
Posted in Electronic Vulnerability, National, Skulduggery and Errors
By Luther Weeks on March 10, 2009
How certain can we be that George Bush won the popular vote in 2004?
How certain can we be that Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000?
How many votes would be added or subtracted if the reported popular vote was close and a process like Minnesota’s were used for a nationwide recount of the paper ballots?
Posted in National, National Popular Vote
By Luther Weeks on March 4, 2009
In the proposed 2009-10 operating budget, Karen Doyle Lyons and Stuart Wells, the Republican and Democratic registrars of voters, respectively, are facing having their pay cut from $46,800 to $23,800.
Posted in Costs, CT
By Luther Weeks on March 4, 2009
I read HAVA. It clearly does not ban levers. I recently discovered what has helped fuel this misinformed opinion in part: it is the discredited position of the discredited U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC)
But there is more to the story.
Posted in Electronic Vulnerability, National