Pressure can work
May. 10th, 2003 02:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khaosworksVoting Machine Leaves Paper Trail
By Joanna Glasner
02:00 AM May. 09, 2003 PT
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logam was terribly demoralized when I forced him to buy and read a copy of Greg Palast's "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy". I should have expected it, and I apologize. For the average person who has been brought up only to be mildly cynical about the world, who has been taught that yes, bad people exist but the worst things are mostly the stuff of conspiracy theories, to basically be given the red pill and have the true extent of the badness and selfishness of the world shown to him in one, compact, deadly little package... well, that's a lot to absorb and it surely shakes the confidence of any person in the essential dogma that good can still triumph over evil. Naturally, he was angry at me, being the messenger of this vile information.
At an early age, I took these words to heart. "Evil usually triumphs unless good is very, very careful."
My reply to him was not to give up hope. Despite my cynical, hard-bitten exterior, I still believe that most people are good people, on the whole. Yes, individually they can be assholes, and collectively, they can be sheep, but somewhere in the middle, most of the time, if you give them the informed choice, they will do the right thing. The reason the evil bastards in power get away with the atrocities they do is because they keep the people uninformed as to exactly how evil they are. The purpose of the activist, the journalist, the individual - the duty of everyone, is to make sure that all the information is available so that they can't pull the wool over your eyes.
If the new stories about the vote-rigging possible in DRE machines had been suppressed. If the connection between the Jeb Bush administration and Votronic hadn't been brought to light. If the questions hadn't been asked about Chuck Hagel's connection to ES&S and his victory in the Nebraska Senate Race last year. If David Dill's petition hadn't been widely circulated. If Bev Harris hadn't put up her web-site and written her book. If Dan Spillane hadn't filed his lawsuit against VoteHere. If these things had not happened, then no pressure would have been brought to bear on these companies to put in the safeguards that are sheer common sense.
You see, the evil bastards have one gigantic flaw in their methodology. They still have to play by the rules of the good guys. How can this be? Because they get into power not only by pretending to be the good guy (since people will not knowingly vote in an evil bastard), but also usually by trying to prove that the other bastard is more evil than they. And they can only do this by promising to put measures into effect that will curb the reach of evil bastards in general. And they will, because (a) they have to follow up on promises, (b) they want to take power away from the other evil bastard and (c) they think they can sneak their way around those measures later. Ultimately, though, they will do this because people have to be kept under the illusion that the system is predicated to stop the evillest of excesses. And in so doing, the evil bastards essentially feter themselves. The only way they can get around it is by leaving loopholes or by not letting the people know the true nature of what they are doing.
And that relies on disinformation. Which is why standing on a table, screaming aloud to the world that these evil bastards exist and waving the documentation that proves it in the faces of people who are understandably numb by the revelation but who, if they will just sit down and digest the information, will realize the extent of the lie and do the right thing... is really the only way to fight the evil bastards.
And so pressure works. If enough people realize what's going on, they will start asking the same questions. And eventually, the evil bastards will run up against the rules they thought they could get around. And since they have to play by those rules, they will have to fold and give the people what they should have given them in the first place: responsible, decent government.
They will fight you. They will call you unpatriotic. They will only give as much as they will give and no more, which is why the battle is not stopped here, for it continues on many many fronts. You must grab them by the gonads and squeeze every reform out of them.
This is an example. The pressure so far has made ES&S come up with a way to produce a paper trial. Other companies will follow suit. But the pressure must not ease. You must now direct some of it to the state and federal governments because now they have to be convinced that the public wants them to spend the extra $300-$400 per machine - in a time of fiscal crisis, that's not going to be easy. Now ask the question whether $300-$400 is the actual cost involved or is it an arbitrary price designed to discourage state and federal governments from spending that money. And those who oppose spending such money - you have to ask what interest they have in preventing the voter from being able to verify and document that his vote is correctly recorded.
It doesn't stop here, but it's a start. Be encouraged, and don't lose hope. Pressure works. Just don't let up.
Now, I'm going to sleep.
By Joanna Glasner
02:00 AM May. 09, 2003 PT
Voting machines that print individual ballots -- an election accessory many computer scientists have clamored for -- are moving a step closer to widespread availability.Sometimes, pressure can work.
In response to concerns raised by election officials and security-minded techies, one of the largest makers of touch-screen voting machines has introduced a prototype capable of producing paper ballots.
Developed by Election Systems & Software of Omaha, Nebraska, the machine is currently in beta testing, with plans to make it commercially available by July.
"The idea is to provide a voter-verifiable ballot," said Lou Dedier, the ES&S vice president and general manager who built the original test model in his garage. Dedier said his mock-up was based on suggestions from elections administrators.
The planned rollout comes as a coalition of computer scientists, led by David Dill, a Stanford computer science professor, is lobbying election officials and voting machine manufacturers to fix security flaws in the current crop of touch-screen voting machines. The coalition believes the flaws are serious.
In particular, computing experts worry that hundreds of thousands of direct-recording electronic, or DRE, voting machines used in elections nationwide do not provide an auditable paper trail that records individual votes. In order to ensure that votes are not lost because of a computer malfunction or tampering, critics say DRE machines should be able to print and store individual ballots immediately after a vote is cast.
"I'm happy that some are trying to produce interesting solutions to the voter-verifiable audit-trail problem," said Dill. Although he does not endorse any particular voting machine vendor, he considers the ES&S prototype a breakthrough for a major manufacturer.
As pressure mounts for paper receipts, ES&S is not the only one who may add on a ballot-printing feature.
logam was terribly demoralized when I forced him to buy and read a copy of Greg Palast's "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy". I should have expected it, and I apologize. For the average person who has been brought up only to be mildly cynical about the world, who has been taught that yes, bad people exist but the worst things are mostly the stuff of conspiracy theories, to basically be given the red pill and have the true extent of the badness and selfishness of the world shown to him in one, compact, deadly little package... well, that's a lot to absorb and it surely shakes the confidence of any person in the essential dogma that good can still triumph over evil. Naturally, he was angry at me, being the messenger of this vile information.At an early age, I took these words to heart. "Evil usually triumphs unless good is very, very careful."
My reply to him was not to give up hope. Despite my cynical, hard-bitten exterior, I still believe that most people are good people, on the whole. Yes, individually they can be assholes, and collectively, they can be sheep, but somewhere in the middle, most of the time, if you give them the informed choice, they will do the right thing. The reason the evil bastards in power get away with the atrocities they do is because they keep the people uninformed as to exactly how evil they are. The purpose of the activist, the journalist, the individual - the duty of everyone, is to make sure that all the information is available so that they can't pull the wool over your eyes.
If the new stories about the vote-rigging possible in DRE machines had been suppressed. If the connection between the Jeb Bush administration and Votronic hadn't been brought to light. If the questions hadn't been asked about Chuck Hagel's connection to ES&S and his victory in the Nebraska Senate Race last year. If David Dill's petition hadn't been widely circulated. If Bev Harris hadn't put up her web-site and written her book. If Dan Spillane hadn't filed his lawsuit against VoteHere. If these things had not happened, then no pressure would have been brought to bear on these companies to put in the safeguards that are sheer common sense.
You see, the evil bastards have one gigantic flaw in their methodology. They still have to play by the rules of the good guys. How can this be? Because they get into power not only by pretending to be the good guy (since people will not knowingly vote in an evil bastard), but also usually by trying to prove that the other bastard is more evil than they. And they can only do this by promising to put measures into effect that will curb the reach of evil bastards in general. And they will, because (a) they have to follow up on promises, (b) they want to take power away from the other evil bastard and (c) they think they can sneak their way around those measures later. Ultimately, though, they will do this because people have to be kept under the illusion that the system is predicated to stop the evillest of excesses. And in so doing, the evil bastards essentially feter themselves. The only way they can get around it is by leaving loopholes or by not letting the people know the true nature of what they are doing.
And that relies on disinformation. Which is why standing on a table, screaming aloud to the world that these evil bastards exist and waving the documentation that proves it in the faces of people who are understandably numb by the revelation but who, if they will just sit down and digest the information, will realize the extent of the lie and do the right thing... is really the only way to fight the evil bastards.
And so pressure works. If enough people realize what's going on, they will start asking the same questions. And eventually, the evil bastards will run up against the rules they thought they could get around. And since they have to play by those rules, they will have to fold and give the people what they should have given them in the first place: responsible, decent government.
They will fight you. They will call you unpatriotic. They will only give as much as they will give and no more, which is why the battle is not stopped here, for it continues on many many fronts. You must grab them by the gonads and squeeze every reform out of them.
This is an example. The pressure so far has made ES&S come up with a way to produce a paper trial. Other companies will follow suit. But the pressure must not ease. You must now direct some of it to the state and federal governments because now they have to be convinced that the public wants them to spend the extra $300-$400 per machine - in a time of fiscal crisis, that's not going to be easy. Now ask the question whether $300-$400 is the actual cost involved or is it an arbitrary price designed to discourage state and federal governments from spending that money. And those who oppose spending such money - you have to ask what interest they have in preventing the voter from being able to verify and document that his vote is correctly recorded.
It doesn't stop here, but it's a start. Be encouraged, and don't lose hope. Pressure works. Just don't let up.
Now, I'm going to sleep.
