ULTRAMAN VH
10-12-2006, 07:51 AM
By MICHAEL HARRIS
George Bush has taken to telling the world that the war on terror is about bringing democracy to backward and brutal countries.
If he believes that, he might consider the work of Edward W. Felten, the director of Princeton University's Centre for Information Technology.
Felten too is interested in protecting and extending democracy, but his target is not Afghanistan or Iraq. It is the United States.
Felten and his students were able to break into an electronic voting terminal using a devilish piece of hi-tech equipment: A key from a hotel mini-bar.
Once they hacked in, they installed a memory card infected by a virus that incorrectly recorded votes. The professor pointed out that a compromised electronic counting program can easily manipulate a close election.
It is also next to impossible to detect. The virus can pass from terminal to terminal and erase itself from the machine's memory as soon as the election is over.
Why does this matter? In the last presidential elections, one-third of the votes of Americans were cast on electronic voting machines. Virtually none of those machines produced voter-verifiable paper ballots, so the voter had no way of confirming that his vote was properly recorded.
Worse, the majority of voting machines used in 2004 relied on so-called "black-box" software that has never been checked for security.
Think about it for a moment. The election of the president of the United States is increasingly founded on a system of vote-counting that can't be verified. The fact that the vendors of these machines provide company technicians to deal with any problems is cold comfort, particularly since they have unsupervised access to the equipment.
How could the world's greatest democracy come up with an electoral process that defies an audit? Some companies say it is too difficult to provide a paper receipt for voters. I think the ingenuity that got America to Mars could probably figure out how tp make a machine that gives a receipt, as anyone who has cashed out at Wal-Mart or paid at the gas pump with a credit card knows.
Then there is the bureaucratic factor. Although states are able to use a hybrid system of counting votes that supplies a scanned paper ballot, many states have already rejected them. After all, if you've got paper ballots and you're an election administrator, you have to print, distribute and store them.
How much easier to toss out the scanners and roll in a dozen touch-screen terminals? Trouble is, if the election is close and the fertilizer hits the fan, a recount is impossible. You can't count what you don't have.
Sometimes it gets downright embarrassing. After spending $106 million on state-of-the-art electronic voting machines, Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich, a Republican, is now advising citizens in his state to use absentee ballots to vote in November because he doesn't trust the new electronic system.
Why would he? A few weeks back, Maryland tried to use voter identification machines and they crashed. It turned out that the software for the machines had never been tested with a full day of simulated voting. The manufacturers were awfully sorry.
But there is more to America's foundering democracy than malicious hackers, crashing computers and unverifiable e-votes. With the exception of just three states, the rest of the country allows the incumbent party, whether Democratic or Republican, to redraw voting districts to their advantage. Neutral electoral officials perform the same function in Arizona, Iowa, and New Jersey.
In four key battleground states in the November mid-term elections -- Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Michigan -- the Republicans have been busily redrawing electoral districts. Although voter registration shows that there is a pretty even split between Democrats and Republicans in these states, gerrymandering has made 51 of 77 seats Republican.
The U.S. correspondent for the Observer put it this way: "Gerrymandering enables politicians to choose their electors. Not the other way around."
The next time you hear commentators talk about how few seats are in play this November, it might pay to remember why.
It isn't because Americans approve of the current administration's policies in Iraq and Afghanistan. They don't. It isn't because they -- or 16 U.S. intelligence agencies -- believe that the war on terror has made them safer. It hasn't. And it isn't because they like being spied on by their own government. It is because politicians on both sides of the political spectrum are pouring water into each other's wine and the results, once recorded electronically, vanish into thin air.
Whether it is the key to a mini-bar or a politician choosing his own voters, the country that wants to export democracy might not be getting much of it come November.
ottawasun.com
George Bush has taken to telling the world that the war on terror is about bringing democracy to backward and brutal countries.
If he believes that, he might consider the work of Edward W. Felten, the director of Princeton University's Centre for Information Technology.
Felten too is interested in protecting and extending democracy, but his target is not Afghanistan or Iraq. It is the United States.
Felten and his students were able to break into an electronic voting terminal using a devilish piece of hi-tech equipment: A key from a hotel mini-bar.
Once they hacked in, they installed a memory card infected by a virus that incorrectly recorded votes. The professor pointed out that a compromised electronic counting program can easily manipulate a close election.
It is also next to impossible to detect. The virus can pass from terminal to terminal and erase itself from the machine's memory as soon as the election is over.
Why does this matter? In the last presidential elections, one-third of the votes of Americans were cast on electronic voting machines. Virtually none of those machines produced voter-verifiable paper ballots, so the voter had no way of confirming that his vote was properly recorded.
Worse, the majority of voting machines used in 2004 relied on so-called "black-box" software that has never been checked for security.
Think about it for a moment. The election of the president of the United States is increasingly founded on a system of vote-counting that can't be verified. The fact that the vendors of these machines provide company technicians to deal with any problems is cold comfort, particularly since they have unsupervised access to the equipment.
How could the world's greatest democracy come up with an electoral process that defies an audit? Some companies say it is too difficult to provide a paper receipt for voters. I think the ingenuity that got America to Mars could probably figure out how tp make a machine that gives a receipt, as anyone who has cashed out at Wal-Mart or paid at the gas pump with a credit card knows.
Then there is the bureaucratic factor. Although states are able to use a hybrid system of counting votes that supplies a scanned paper ballot, many states have already rejected them. After all, if you've got paper ballots and you're an election administrator, you have to print, distribute and store them.
How much easier to toss out the scanners and roll in a dozen touch-screen terminals? Trouble is, if the election is close and the fertilizer hits the fan, a recount is impossible. You can't count what you don't have.
Sometimes it gets downright embarrassing. After spending $106 million on state-of-the-art electronic voting machines, Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich, a Republican, is now advising citizens in his state to use absentee ballots to vote in November because he doesn't trust the new electronic system.
Why would he? A few weeks back, Maryland tried to use voter identification machines and they crashed. It turned out that the software for the machines had never been tested with a full day of simulated voting. The manufacturers were awfully sorry.
But there is more to America's foundering democracy than malicious hackers, crashing computers and unverifiable e-votes. With the exception of just three states, the rest of the country allows the incumbent party, whether Democratic or Republican, to redraw voting districts to their advantage. Neutral electoral officials perform the same function in Arizona, Iowa, and New Jersey.
In four key battleground states in the November mid-term elections -- Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Michigan -- the Republicans have been busily redrawing electoral districts. Although voter registration shows that there is a pretty even split between Democrats and Republicans in these states, gerrymandering has made 51 of 77 seats Republican.
The U.S. correspondent for the Observer put it this way: "Gerrymandering enables politicians to choose their electors. Not the other way around."
The next time you hear commentators talk about how few seats are in play this November, it might pay to remember why.
It isn't because Americans approve of the current administration's policies in Iraq and Afghanistan. They don't. It isn't because they -- or 16 U.S. intelligence agencies -- believe that the war on terror has made them safer. It hasn't. And it isn't because they like being spied on by their own government. It is because politicians on both sides of the political spectrum are pouring water into each other's wine and the results, once recorded electronically, vanish into thin air.
Whether it is the key to a mini-bar or a politician choosing his own voters, the country that wants to export democracy might not be getting much of it come November.
ottawasun.com