Archive / E-Voting

The HackTheVote stuff has grown so much that I decided to put the links together on one page to make it easier for you to navigate.

As always, click around, enjoy, and write your elected officials and tell them you want Hand-Counted Paper Ballots. Now.

Thanks! :-)

Chuck

Here we go:

The original HackTheVote page with the demo and time stamped audit logs. There's also SpeedHacking The Vote - for those with a flair for the overly dramatic. Both of these are demonstrated on NASED certified software written by Diebold.

Then there's the HackTheVoteFAQ - check it out. Worth a read - there were a lot of good questions posed there. My responses to a lot of other good questions on my "Since you asked..." page. If you've seen the demo, you'll want to see these two pages.

My recent PowerPoint given to the NC Joint Select Subcommittee on E-Voting, January 7th, 2005. The first part talks about what we do in business vs what we do in e-voting, and the second part rips apart Diebold's vote tabulation software, showing it for the criminal piece of crap that it is.

Dear Chuck.... I've gotten thousands of emails and tried to respond, and this is what some of them had to say. To all who have written and not heard back - I'm sorry, I'm still going through them. I have 503 unread messages right now....... These excerpts show exactly what the will of the voters is - A System they can TRUST!

That shouldn't come as a surprise - What, do I have to draw you a freakin' map? Paper ballots, counted by hand, is what we use to give us final word in the event of a dispute.

Analogy: There's no reason to put in a great backup parachute and use something known to be faulty as the main, even though the faulty main chute WILL get you your final results more quickly! Just use the good one from the beginning, and keep another good one in reserve. It may take longer to get where you're going, but you'll like the results better - I guarantee it.

Paper is what voters trust. Period.

Oh yeah - I also had a couple of letters left under the back seat of the short bus that made their way into my inbox, and a few questions for my elected officials. As always, take what you can use!

After browsing all that, go to EFF.org and pledge a little cizzash, or jump to my Contact Page and say hi. I'll try to get back to you :-)

Feel free to link to or photocopy this page or any of the HackTheVote material if you think it can help fix the problems. More power to you.

Articles:

The Moral High Ground, Or How NOT to Talk to a Conservative.

"The next person that asks me "How can you still be a Republican after Bush stole the election?" is getting a size 15 to the nuts. Or hooch, whichever's there. Whatever - I'm kicking."

January 17th - It's the integrity, stupid.

New posting for sometime in late December:

Republicans are smarter than this ..."I hear us say, "Man, did you see all those black people standing in the rain for 9 hours to vote? And it still wasn't enough to beat the Republican Machine!"

Republican Machine, indeed. You’re more right than you know..."

New posting for 12/15/2004:

Empathy Speech from NC Verified Voting Rally in Raleigh, NC

New posting for 12/13/2004:

Paper Ballot Speech from NC Verified Voting Rally in Raleigh, NC

Two new postings for 11/23/2004:

Empathy Training for Liberals: A Primer on the Conservative Mind, From the Inside of One. ..."Another thing we did was go through something called “Empathy Training”, which usually involved going completely blindfolded for a day, or taping several fingers together to simulate motor skills difficulty, or spending a weekend in a wheelchair. This was less fun than spending your Saturday outside building ramps, but for a young man it was a real eye-opener, trying to live “a day in the life”. As a result of this “Empathy Training”, all of a sudden those old Helen Keller jokes weren’t so funny anymore.

Without drawing the analogy that Conservatives are Severely Handicapped ( Hey! Remember, I’m one too :-) ), I would like to offer some insight into how the Conservative mind works for you Liberals out there, so that perhaps we can stop Demonizing each other (Nazi! Fag! Fascist! Pantywaist!) and open meaningful channels of communication."...MORE

Empathy Training for Compassionate Conservatives: Why the Democrats Are Still Whining About the Election. ..."I love him, but he probably couldn't pick Karl Rove out of an Evil Genius Lineup with Dr. Evil, Max Scorpio, and that Steve guy from the Linux cartoon (www.ubergeek.tv/switchlinux). I can imagine it now - "Suspect number 3, please turn to the right and say 'Mwuahh-haa-haa.'"

Actually, this is a guy I've known for almost 15 years, a college buddy and fraternity brother who I have leaned against on many drunken and interesting nights, and is one of the very few people in the world I trust explicitly. I took a few seconds to let what he said sink in, and then I warily replied, "Actually, that's kind of the problem. So far, all the vote fraud analysis that's been done indicates that it benefited us 100% of the time."

He replied, "Yeah? Huh. Go figure. Hey, can you make it to the Tampa Bay / Panthers game next weekend? Kevin's coming up from Florida, and we're tailgating!"....MORE

An Easy Solution: The Vote Integrity Method:

Here's what I propose - let's call it the "Vote Integrity" method.

Before the election, distribute the ballots by mail to give people a chance to research and vote at their leisure, then voters bring them in and drop them off at a polling place on election day after showing an ID and signing in.

Giving voters the ability to vote in their own home will make for a better informed electorate, and will also cut down on lines and time spent at the polling place. The potential problem here is that some voters may not receive their ballots, but in the worst case, they can show up at the polls and get one on election day. Most voters have no idea who any of the local candidates are, and often show up without a clue as to which amendments/referendums they are voting for. Ballot distribution before election day would give everyone a chance to learn more about the issues they are voting for, and would cut way down on the 9-hour lines, which caused many voters to bail out and not vote in 2004.

When the voters come in to the polling place, they show an ID, sign in, and drop their single ballot in a locked plexiglass box. Poll workers can verify that not more than one ballot is being deposited by one person. Anyone who never received or lost their ballot can obtain another one there and vote normally. For any visually impaired voters, they can use a touchscreen that generates a paper ballot, which gets dropped into the same box. This touchscreen could even be delivered to the curb, if needed. Simple.

At the end of the day, we unlock the clear boxes and count the votes by hand, in public. We can take the tax money earmarked for DREs and pay local citizens to help us count. Problem solved, everybody wins, and everybody trusts the system.

What's so hard about that? There are no weaknesses introduced by this system that any other systems can fix (vote selling, etc.), it's more resistant to fraud than typical absentee or vote by mail (due to the authentication of the voter before the ballot is cast, the ID requirement helps prevent multiple votes), the time it takes to vote is shortened, the voters are better informed, it's cheaper, local people are employed to help count the votes rather than private corporations, and everyone trusts the results.

And isn't that the point? Why wouldn't this work?

I'd like to hear what people have to say about this method - why wouldn't it work? I think it would, but everybody likes their own ideas :-). Let me know.

Chuck