Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"[Flying an aircraft] is very different from driving a land vehicle, especially a car. And as I HAVE tried flying an aircraft, AND watercraft, and a large number of different types of ground craft, I can say this with fair certainty. Driving a car is basically like running. Yes, there's mechanical differences, but you use the same mental skillset, except you're not concerned with your own physical resources being exhausted just from doing it for a short time.

"Flying is like nothing we do normally, not even swimming."

-- seawasp, 2006-06-13 in the newsgroup rec.arts.sf.fandom [Message-ID: <448E2A3B.1040902@obvioussgeinc.com>, Subject: "Re: go directly to jail"]

I knew it was bad.

Others have been saying it's bad, and providing evidence.

Still others stick their fingers in their ears and shout, "I can't hear you," or look blankly and say, "Why does this matter?" or scratch their heads and say, "Oh, it can't possibly be that bad or somebody would have already done something about it ... You haven't turned into one of those conspiracy theorists, have you?" Perhaps some, oblivious to the long history of low-tech dirty tricks and attempted (successful?) cheating in elections here and elsewhere, still think, "Oh, but nobody would actually do that, so it's okay.

Y'know what? It looks like it's even worse than I'd thought.

From the IT folks up at Princeton:

Analysis of the [Diebold AccuVote-TS] machine, in light of real election procedures, shows that it is vulnerable to extremely serious attacks. For example, an attacker who gets physical access to a machine or its removable memory card for as little as one minute could install malicious code; malicious code on a machine could steal votes undetectably, modifying all records, logs, and counters to be consistent with the fraudulent vote count it creates. An attacker could also create malicious code that spreads automatically and silently from machine to machine during normal election activities -- a voting-machine virus. We have constructed working demonstrations of these attacks in our lab. Mitigating these threats will require changes to the voting machine's hardware and software and the adoption of more rigorous election procedures. [emphasis added]

Hmm. So much for the "but they'd need to gain access to an awful lot of machines to make a big enough difference" reassurance?

---

As the Princeton folks say in their FAQ, in response to folks who think this is just sour grapes from 2004, "Our goal is to make elections more accurate. That shouldn't be a partisan issue [...]" Admittedly I, D'Glenn, am less neutral on the subject of recent elections than these researchers are, but this -- the matter of whether we have verifiable, secure voting -- really should not be a partisan issue. Consider this:

• For Democrats who believe or suspect that the 2004 election was stolen, or who believe that the Republicans are capable of resorting to such tactics in the future -- you obviously want close these security holes.
• For Republicans who believe Democrats play dirtier than they do, and/or are certain that the 2004 election was completely fair -- even if 99.99% of Democrats are good, honest folk, how sure are you that a handful of extremist nutjobs out past the fringe of their party, convinced that the 2004 election was stolen and disgruntled that nothing was done about it, won't try to 'even the score' by doing to you what they think you did to them, if these security holes aren't closed?
• For independents, Greens, Libertarians, etc. -- isn't it hard enough getting your vote to really count without also having to worry whether it was even counted in the first place?
• And for everyone -- as long as these opportunities for mischief remain, what's to stop random monkeywrenchers, enemies of us all or mere sociopathic vandals, from screwing it up for everybody even if no party is doing it to steal an election? Wouldn't Al Queda just love to fuck with our government and our society on such a fundamental level? Wouldn't some p00r-5p3113r cr4ck3r \/\/4nn4-B make a hell of a name for himself doing this?

So who the hell wouldn't want a better system than this demonstrably dangerously flawed one? Only the folks who, in the backs of their minds, want to hold the option of tampering available in case they someday deem it 'necessary', right? Or those more concerned with profit -- from machine sales, bribes, kickbacks, whatever -- than any belief in the importance of democracy. When you hear about someone who actively opposes trying to fix these problems, ask yourself why they would do so.

It's not a partisan issue, nor is it some unsolvable "just gotta live with it" problem. Either you believe our one-person-one-vote system is a good idea and worth protecting, or you don't.