[EL] Hypothetical ballot privacy issues vs actual rights

[Joseph Lorenzo Hall]

I'm not going to respond to incoherent emotional sensationalism, Bev.

My track record of working with election officials, advocates and
researchers to improve election practice, theory and policy speaks for
itself. We are funded to do basic science, which by it's very nature sweats
the small stuff, and translate that research into artifacts that improve
elections. I work in health IT policy now, and only have a couple projects
of my own in voting that we're wrapping up: one involving observation and
interviews to understand pollworkers' mental models of trust, security, and
privacy and another involving a large sample of voting system contracts from
1998-2008.

best, Joe

On Friday, September 9, 2011, Bev Harris <bev at blackboxvoting.org> wrote:
> Joe Hall and friends recommend not releasing images for public
examination. In
> private communications, that cadre of techies has gone further, indicating
that
> they don't buy into the idea that the public has a right to see and
> authenticate the crucial processes in public elections.
>
> But regarding ballot privacy, let's just say that the chocolate smudge
theory
> now has a pair of academic glasses. (In litigation against the public
right to
> examine ballots, one Colorado official claimed that voter privacy could be
> stolen if a poll worker placed a chocolate smudge on a ballot.)
>
> The plain truth is, you cannot replace right to self government with an
> absolutist interpretation of a right to ballot privacy. This is not to say
that
> ballot privacy is not important. But if it is a "right" it is a
lower-level
> right to the right to public self-governance, which is a highest level
right.
>
> Hall and his team (who have received grant monies to develop their
encryption
> project), seem unduly concerned about a tiny hypothetical number of
potentially
> violated privacies, but only in the context of their own efforts to insert
> their cryptography between the public and the ballots.
>
> But I call bullshit. Within the context of their own grant, they are
concerned
> about a hypothetical situation, while at the same time they have not
uttered a
> peep about a non-theoretical, large-scale, and very real problem with
ballot
> privacy. The current practice of placing unique bar codes on mail-in
ballots,
> unique to each voter, represents a massive threat and perhaps may be the
real
> reason vendors and county clerks are afraid to let the public examine the
> ballots. Were we allowed to look, it would be easy to prove that unique
> identifiers have been placed on the ballots by the vendor Hart Intercivic
> widely used in Colorado and Washington), and in an earlier case, in a
> mail-voting product made by VoteHere.
>
> If you doubt me, check your mail-in ballot. If you live in either Colorado
or
> Washington, and you live in the same household as another voter, examine
your
> own ballots when you receive them in the mail. You will now see a unique
bar
> code printed right on each ballot.
>
> Now, add another raspberry. Hall and his team, while using the
infinitesimal
> possibility of a tiny quantity of ballots being discerned by others, are
also
> part of the crowd who shrug off voter fraud because of the supposedly
small
> quantity of improper votes. This seems incongruent. On the one hand, they
have
> a theory that a mathematician armed with a small wheelbarrow of data and
> several months to examine it might extract voter privacy information on
one or
> two voters. Why would a small number of voter privacy violations be worse
than
> a small number of fraudulent votes? I can't understand why an intangible
threat
> which requires a second step (someone has to actually USE the voter
privacy
> theft for coercion or bribery) would be worse than an actual false vote
counted
> in the tallies.
>
> Now, as to the claim that double or ineligible votes are not counted in
the
> tallies, I have spent four months examining the voter lists from various
> states, and I can tell you this: The number of people who vote twice is
small
> (in one location I found three out of 100,000 votes; in a second, two out
of
> 8800 votes.) This small number does exist, though, and I would contend
that in
> terms of weighting, an actually counted wrongfully cast vote would
outweigh a
> potentially exploited privacy theft. Both are bad, but I don't see how you
can
> be against the second and not even more worried about the first.
>
> So here's the simple solution: Ban the unique, individualized bar codes on
> mail-in ballots. That takes a meaningful step to protect the most
wholesale and
> dangerous threat to voter privacy. Allow the public to examine who can
vote,
> who did vote, chain of custody and the count, which can be done in a
number of
> ways. Get out in the field and see what's really happening, as I have,
look at
> the real data, and stop dithering about how many dancers can fit on the
head of
> a pin.
>
> Bev Harris
> Founder - Black Box Voting
> http://www.blackboxvoting.org
>
> * * * * *
>
> Government is the servant of the people, and not the master of them. The
> people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the
right
> to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for
them to
> know. We insist on remaining informed so that we may retain control over
the
> instruments of government we have created.
>
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-- 
Joseph Lorenzo Hall
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Media, Culture and Communication
New York University
https://josephhall.org/
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