31 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981
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The Telecom Digest for October 24, 2012
Volume 31 : Issue 248 : "text" Format
====== 31 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======
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Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2012 21:58:55 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Paper prophets: Why e-voting is on the decline in the United States
Message-ID: <p06240839ccacf84d62f9@[10.0.1.3]>
Paper prophets: Why e-voting is on the decline in the United States
States see the virtue of paper ballots, but some lack funds to ditch e-voting.
by Timothy B. Lee
Oct 22 2012
Ars Technica
Ernest Zirkle was puzzled. The resident of Fairfield Township in
Cumberland County, NJ, ran for a seat on his local Democratic
Executive Committee on June 7, 2011. The official results showed him
earning only nine votes, compared to 34 votes for the winning
candidate.
But at least 28 people told Zirkle they voted for him. So he and his
wife-who also ran for an open seat and lost-challenged the result in
court. Eventually, a county election official admitted the result was
due to a programming error. A security expert from Princeton was
called in to examine the machines and make sure no foul play had
occurred. Unfortunately, when he examined the equipment on August 17,
2011, he found someone deleted key files the previous day, making it
impossible to investigate the cause of the malfunction. A new
election was held on September 27, and the Zirkles won.
A decade ago, there was a great deal of momentum toward paperless
electronic voting. Spooked by the chaos of the 2000 presidential
election in Florida, Congress unleashed a torrent of money to buy new
high-tech machines. Today, momentum is in the opposite direction.
Computer security researchers have convinced most observers that
machines like the ones in Fairfield Township degrade the security and
reliability of elections rather than enhancing them. Several states
passed laws mandating an end to paperless elections. But bureaucratic
inertia and tight budgets have slowed the pace at which these flawed
machines can be retired.
Luckily, no e-voting catastrophes seem to have occurred. The
irregularities that have risen to public attention since 2006 have
tended to be small-scale or low-stakes incidents like the one in
Fairfield Township. But lack of high-profile failure is not an
argument for complacency. If an election were stolen by hackers in a
state that used paperless voting machines, we wouldn't necessarily be
able to detect it. Just because a major disaster hasn't happened in
recent elections doesn't mean it can't happen in 2012.
...
http://arstechnica.com/features/2012/10/paper-prophets-why-e-voting-is-on-the-decline-in-the-united-states/
***** Moderator's Note *****
It's impossible to say if any "e-voting catastrophes" have occurred,
or if pivotal local and state elections that saw reformers defeated
have been "decided" by jerrymandered e-votes - just that nobody ever
got caught. I think that George W. Bush was elected by Diebold's
voting software, not the voters, and I'll carry that suspicion to my
grave.
Those few computer security experts who were given access to Diebold's
software were unanimous in thier criticism of the design concepts, the
implementations, and the lack of ordinary security features. They
couldn't discuss details - in itself, a tragedy - but everyone I've
seen interviewed said "They did it wrong" in one way or another.
Say what you want about paper ballots, but there's one thing that
nobody can say - that paper ballots are proprietary or privileged or
too complicated for ordinary people to undertand. If voters like me
believe the process is corrupt at its core, then we cease to live in a
democracy.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2012 13:25:24 -0400
From: T <kd1s.nospam@cox.nospam.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Voter surveys difficult due to cell phones
Message-ID: <MPG.2af09d12df9f68ab989dc7@news.eternal-september.org>
In article <iauv78ljk12tv96c4o6f7pt5uqncjum86j@4ax.com>,
PeteCress@invalid.telecom-digest.org says...
[Moderator snip]
> As it is now, all my phones are on both state and fed no-call lists, I
> work at home, as a practical matter I have to answer every time the
> phone rings because it might be a client needing help.
>
> I'm writing software, so every time I have to answer the phone
> the little house of cards I have in my mind goes "Poof!" and
> after the call it takes a couple of minutes to re-create it.
>
> I'm getting at least a dozen telephone solicitor or robo calls a
> day...DNC lists notwithstanding...
>
> I'm right on the edge of being a single-issue voter on this. Not
> quite... but disturbingly close.
It's even a problem on cell phones lately. I just installed the Android
app called BlackList - with it the phone never rings if your number is
in the list.
Now if I could only do something about the spam texts.
Or more that irks me - the text message I got from my carrier - in
Spanish no less.
***** Moderator's Note *****
How does "Blacklist" work? Can it be used on any Android-based phone?
Bill Horne
Moderator
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