“There are no American political parties … because we have none, we have no opposition to those who rule us.”

We don’t have political parties, let’s begin with that. And we’ve never had them since John Adams said “I want a nation of laws, not of men.” Well that’s very lofty, of course, but what he meant was he didn’t want faction. Well, faction is political parties. Now, without faction you don’t have any kind of, well, motion going within the state … we’re suffering from it now.

- Gore Vidal, interview (wmv format) - via The Young Turks

See also:

Wikipedia: What Went Wrong in Ohio by John Conyers.

Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio: Status Report of the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff (pdf)

Henry Rollins Interviews Gore Vidal @ YouTube

Internet-based democracy in Australia

Senator On-Line is not aligned to any other political party… it is neither Liberal nor Labor.

Senator On-Line (‘SOL’) is a truly democratic party which will allow everyone on the Australian Electoral roll who has access to the internet to vote on every Bill put to Parliament and have its Senators vote in accordance with a clear majority view.

We will be running candidates for the upcoming federal Upper House (Senate) elections.

When a SOL senator is elected a web site will be developed which will provide:

* Accurate information and balanced argument on each Bill and important issues
* The vast majority of those registered on the Australian Electoral roll the chance to have their say by voting on bills and issues facing our country
* A tally of all votes which will then count in Parliament

Each person on the Australian Electoral roll will be entitled to one vote and only be allowed to vote once on each bill or issue.

SOL senators will have committed in writing to voting in line with the clear majority view of the SOL on-line voters.

- Senator On-Line: Link.

Via SlashDot: Link.

“Open-records laws in Ohio mean anyone can follow the machines’ paper trail to see who voted for which candidates.”

Ohio’s method of conducting elections with electronic voting machines appears to have created a true privacy nightmare for state residents: revealing who voted for which candidates.

Two Ohio activists have discovered that e-voting machines made by Election Systems and Software and used across the country produce time-stamped paper trails that permit the reconstruction of an election’s results–including allowing voter names to be matched to their actual votes.

[Declan McCullagh, CNET News.com, August 20, 2007: Link]

Via SlashDot.

Comments @ SlashDot
In the UK, polls aren’t really secret either.

In the 1980s (and probably subsequently) it was normal practice for Special Branch to inspect the ballot papers of those who voted for parties which were considered potentially subversive (Communists, BNP, National Front.) They could then match those voting papers to the voters (by dint of the fact that the voter’s name was written on a list next to the voting paper number) and keep a handy database of undesirables.

[Harold Halloway: Link]

“An analysis of Diebold’s source code shows that a hacker with access to a single voting machine could use a virus to affect an election.”

Diebold Election Systems Inc. voting machines are not secure enough to guarantee a trustworthy election, and an attacker with access to a single machine could disrupt or change the outcome of an election using viruses, according to a review of Diebold’s source code.

… “An attack could plausibly be accomplished by a single skilled individual with temporary access to a single voting machine. The damage could be extensive — malicious code could spread to every voting machine in polling places and to county election servers,” it said.

… “A virus could allow an attacker who only had access to a few machines or memory cards, or possibly to only one, to spread malicious software to most, if not all, of a county’s voting machines,” the report said. “Thus, large-scale election fraud in the Diebold system does not necessarily require physical access to a large number of voting machines.”

The report warned that a paper trail of votes cast is not sufficient to guarantee the integrity of an election using the machines. “Malicious code might be able to subtly influence close elections, and it could disrupt elections by causing widespread equipment failure on election day,” it said.

[Sumner Lemon, IDG News Service - August 02, 2007 - Link]

The report: Source Code Review of the Diebold Voting System.

Via Slashdot.

SlashDot comment: “As someone who had been contracted by Diebold, the machines are running Windows, the software is written in Visual Basic, and the database is Access. And no, this isn’t a troll.” Link.

Bo Lipari reports: “Over the last two months Microsoft and a cadre of high paid lobbyists have been working a full-court press in Albany in an attempt to bring about a serious weakening of New York State election law.”

On Thursday, June 14, I recieved a copy of proposed changes to New York State Election Law [Link to PDF] drafted by Microsoft attorneys that has been circulating among the Legislature. These changes would gut the source code escrow and review provisions provided in our current law, which were fought for and won by election integrity activists around the state and adopted by the Legislature in June 2005. In an earlier blog I wrote about Microsoft’s unwillingness to comply with New York State’s escrow and review requirements. Now the software giant has gone a step further, not just saying “we won’t comply with your law” but actively trying to change state law to serve their corporate interests. Microsoft’s attorneys drafted an amendment which would add a paragraph to Section 1-104 of NYS Election Law defining “election-dedicated voting system technology”. Microsoft’s proposed change to state law would effectively render our current requirements for escrow and the ability for independent review of source code in the event of disputes completely meaningless - and with it the protections the public fought so hard for.

[Bo Lipari: Link]

Via SlashDot, which observes that “Microsoft is siding with the makers of voting machines that run on Windows — the company doesn’t want its code inspected by outsiders.”

HR 811: Separating Truth From Fiction in E-voting Reform

After years of painstaking lobbying, e-mail and phone campaigns, congressional hearings, and committee markups and amendments, Rep. Rush Holt’s Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act finally appears poised for a floor vote in the House of Representatives. With an impressive 216 bipartisan co-sponsors, the bill has a real chance of passing. If signed into law, HR 811 would dramatically improve the electoral process in both the short and long term. While it would not solve the immense shortcomings in the current system, HR 811 would take a giant step towards returning much-needed transparency and accountability to the process.

What would HR 811 do? Among other things:

* Raise the floor, not a create a ceiling. The higher standards required by HR 811 would provide the beginning, not the end, of serious election reform. States wishing to, say, ban all electronic voting machines, impose stricter audit requirements, or force vendors to publicly disclose all of their source code will remain free to do so, as they are today. If HR 811 becomes law, however, states would not be permitted to lag behind in many important areas as so many do today.

* Require the generation of a voter-verified paper ballot. HR 811 would forbid in federal elections the use of direct recording electronic voting machines (DREs) that do not generate voter-verified paper ballots (VVPBs). See proposed Sec. 301(a)(2)(A)(i): “The voting system shall require the use of or produce an individual, durable, voter-verified paper ballot of the voter’s vote that shall be created by or made available for inspection and verification by the voter before the voter’s vote is cast and counted.” States wishing to impose additional requirements regarding what to do with VVPBs, such as a mandatory hand-count of all paper ballots, would be able to do so.

* Require manual audits of every federal election. HR 811 would not mandate (or forbid) the counting of VVPBs in all circumstances. Instead, HR 811 would require, for the first time in American history, across-the-board manual audits of federal elections. See proposed Sec. 321(a)(1): “[E]ach State shall administer, without advance notice to the precincts selected, audits of the results of elections for Federal office held in the State (and, at the option of the State or jurisdiction involved, of elections for State and local office held at the same time as such election) consisting of random hand counts of the voter-verified paper ballots …” Specifically, HR 811 would require audits of 3-10% of all precincts in every federal election (see proposed Sec. 322), depending on the apparent margin of victory and except in the case of landslide victories. This would be a breathtaking and unprecedented achievement. By contrast, federal law currently contains no audit requirement at all. States believing that initial hand counts or more robust audit protocols are more appropriate for their voters would have every right to impose such requirements.

* Require the disclosure of voting system source code in limited circumstances. HR 811 would, for the first time under federal law, explicitly mandate the disclosure of voting system source code to certain “qualified persons,” identified as (among others) parties to litigation and individuals who “review[], analyze[], or report[] on the technology solely for an academic, scientific, technological, or other investigation or inquiry concerning the accuracy or integrity of the technology.”

[Electronic Freedom Foundation]

Via Slashdot.

See Also

Read the bill in its entirety:
Library of Congress > THOMAS > Bills, Resolutions

Hotel Minibar Keys Open Diebold Voting Machines –

The key that controls access to a standard Diebold voting machine is a common key that can be ordered from the Internet, also used to open hotel minibars.

The access panel door on a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine — the door that protects the memory card that stores the votes, and is the main barrier to the injection of a virus — can be opened with a standard key that is widely available on the Internet…

[Ed Felten: Link]

Via Boing Boing.