Last week a group of computer security experts issued a warning about a proposed expansion of government spying know as CALEA II (Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Assistance) being considered for “wire” tap expansion.
The report if anything understates the risks. Further, if you believe that, in general, government can be incompetent, that makes this plan even less effective and more risky.
In La, apparently there is evidence and no disagreement that fraud occurred. The issue is which campaign did it. Maybe it is both? Absentee voting is a convenience, not just for voters, it really helps fraudsters as well.
Cash strapped New Haven would be a bad place to test early voting in 2013. It is the first competitive election in New Haven in 20 years. Turnout is all but guaranteed to increase – early voting or not – we can predict that early voting would get the credit.
As the Connecticut General Assembly contemplates online voting, we should contemplate r the implications of the recent Liberal Party online vote. In this case it was a landslide. What if it was very very close? Or there were polls saying the other candidate should have won by a comfortable or small margin?
Bonus: 2,904 reasons in New York City alone, that Internet banking and Internet voting can be costly.
Today we have two reports highlighting the worst of the risks. i.e. mass mail voting, sending ballots unsolicited to voters and tracking ballots to voters, completely eliminating the secret vote. One good thing about tracking, apparently it shows dramatically the problems with error and fraud, as well as the lack of official concern with integrity.
at the end of their careers or in retirement, justices tend to figure out where they screwed up. … Now we see that in retirement, O’Connor is still pining about Bush v. Gore.
This is about as ironic as it gets. First the United States has no mechanism for a full recount or audit of its national elections. Second, the call officially comes from John Kerry who overruled his friends, advisers, and supporters to throw in the towel early on the day after the Nov 2004 election, in spite of massive charges of fraud in Ohio – allegations, since largely justified.
This was a simple online poll that was easily compromised. Internet voting vendor software will be harder to compromise, but this shows that computer security is hard and claims must be proved. Before we entrust critical public functions such as voting to such software, the public deserves a solid demonstration that such claims are truly substantiated, and policy makers need to be schooled in a proper skepticism about computer security. That has not yet happened.
Timely for us in Connecticut as our Legislature contemplates online, email, or fax voting for military voters, while they also contemplate mandating towns to provide Internet access to all registrars.
All we can say is “If election officials cannot afford to be on the Internet, how can they provide online, email, or fax voting? If they do not use email, how can they understand Internet Security?”
Monday I testified on three bills, primarily the National Popular Vote Compact. Although I oppose the bill, and have since 2007, I actually favor the popular election of the President. Yet, we have a mismatch between our current state-by-state election system which not a match for the demands of a national popular vote that is fair and one we can trust. Like Europe before the Euro, we have a lot of work to do and details to attend to before we could make the change.
The hearing was close to six and one-half hours, 11:00am – 5:30pm. I was next to the last speaker. I applaud the committee members and public staying until the end, especially the two Co-Chairs and the Senate Ranking Member – they really listened to me and the last speaker, they asked excellent questions and provided the time for complete answers. Five Registrars of Voters also stayed as well.
