Several people have pointed out that my claim of an error was itself an error – the optical scan systems were reviewed as part of the CA study.   

It still is a nice map, though.

Ken,

Sorry, but ALL of these voting systems rely on software and are electronic -- not simply DREs or touchscreens. 

Yes, optical scan systems are far better than DREs because they use voter-marked paper that can be recounted, but the software tabulates and produces reports. 

All of these voting systems' software systems have been studied and found to have significant flaws.  They all run predominantly on legacy code written years ago, updated with patches and tweaks. 

The US Department of Homeland Security is so concerned about the overall poor quality of software and its impact for mission-critical systems used by government and the private sector that it has been working to incentivize the software industry to improve its wares.   See https://buildsecurityin.us-cert.gov/bsi/home.html

One should not trust the voting system software but verify its results.  

--Candice Hoke
Founding Director, Center for Election Integrity
Law, Cleveland State




On 4/8/11 2:21 PM, Ken Mayer wrote:

This is incorrect – only three jurisdictions in Wisconsin use electronic voting machines.  The vast majority of the state uses optiscan paper ballots or plain paper ballots.  The CA study has no relevance, as it focused on the security of DRE machines.

Here’s the map of voting systems used: http://gab.wi.gov/elections-voting/voting-equipment/voting-equipment-use

Ken Mayer

University of Wisconsin-Madison

A suspicion of fraud is not the only reason for conducting an inquiry and recount in Wisconsin or in any other election.  Indeed, that should be the last claim.  But questioning election result accuracy need not and normally does not relate to fraud.

The voting systems used in Wisconsin and elsewhere have been scientifically evaluated by top scientists, concluding they do not use software that attains quality standards of "high assurance" for accuracy and reliability. 

See, e.g., California Secretary of State's Top to Bottom Review of voting systems, led by University of California computer scientists (under UC Final Reports):   http://www.sos.ca.gov/voting-systems/oversight/top-to-bottom-review.htm

Inaccurate election totals can be produced because of software bugs or defects, or from human error that is not related to fraud.  Surely our elections warrant quality assurance checks by qualified IT auditors and a recount that does not rely on the same potentially buggy software.



Professor Candice Hoke
Cleveland-Marshall College of Law
Cleveland State University
216.687.2313
216.798.4643 cell

Disclaimer:  Any opinions I may have expressed are my own and do not reflect the positions of any university, State or Federal institutions, or boards or committees with which I may be affiliated (although I may wish that they did).









On 4/7/11 8:52 PM, Rick Hasen wrote:

  I think I may need to take back the last line of my most recent post.  

Apparently Michael Moore and Daily Kos are raising the possibility of 

election official fraud as well.  Sigh.

Rick

On 4/7/2011 5:48 PM, Paul Lehto wrote:

On 4/7/11, rick.hasen@lls.edu<rick.hasen@lls.edu>  wrote:

http://www.jsonline.mobi/news/statepolitics/119410124.html?ua=blackberry&dc=smart&c=y

A couple months ago, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported some

important context to the admission of Waukesha Clerk Kathy Nickolaus

that "she failed to save in her computer and then report 14,315 votes

in the city of Brookfield, omitting them entirely in an unofficial

tally released after Tuesday's election [giving] 10,859 more votes to

Prosser from Brookfield and 3,456 more to Kloppenburg."

Nickolaus has insisted on keeping all the data on a single old

computer only she has access to, then "finds" this data two days later

after the election.  "Failed to save" means that files dated Thursday

April 7 (which could be fraudulent data) are explained away as

"failing to save" on election night....

The January 11, 2011 Milwaukee Sentinel reported:

"[Waukesha County Clerk Kathy] Nickolaus said she decided to take the

election data collection and storage system off the county's computer

network - and keep it on stand-alone personal computers accessible

only in her office - for security reasons. [...] Because some of her

equipment is so dated - such as an 11-year-old modem for transmitting

data over the telephone and 1995 software no longer supported - and is

not routinely getting security updates, her election systems are not

connected to the county's system but are on stand-alone equipment.

[...]  Although it was not among the audit recommendations, the

clerk's decision to no longer report municipal election results on

election night, as many other county clerks do, was questioned by

Supervisor David Swan of Pewaukee.  "I'm personally disappointed by

that," he said."

Much more at:  http://www.jsonline.com/news/waukesha/114014589.html

Nickolaus happens to be very partisan and to have database

professional credentials, but blames it in on her "human error."

Every line of programming code written,  and every action taken by the

operator of a computer is "human error" so the "human vs. machine"

distinction is ultimately meaningless, except that only humans

intentionally act, while computers simply do as their told by anyone

who speaks their computer language and has access to them.

Paul Lehto, J.D.

PS   The fact that a single Democrat admits in the link above that the

"numbers jibe" is hardly proof of a clean election.   (I take this to

mean that the numbers of voters equal the number of votes, and the

like which would be a minimal requirement easy for even a stupid

cheater to satisfy.)  There have been countless demonstrations on

video of how easy it is to change election results with as little as a

few minutes access to a single computer.  This database analyst had

days of access, based on her personal insistence that she have sole

access to the data on her computer.  Nobody who knows computers could

vouch for that short of an extensive forensic investigation, and even

with that, if she's really good, forensic investigation will come up

empty.

If anyone doubts the above, would they bet entire personal wealth and

assets on this question of whether a computer professional with days

of sole access to all the computerized election data can come up with

numbers that "jibe," and yet are fraudulent in fact?  I think anyone

would be a fool to accept such a bet as against a computer

professional with days of sole access to the data.  It follows that it

is even more foolish to bet Wisconsin's democracy on such things, much

less the nation's.

That being said, election contests (I've done both state and

congressional ones) are so difficult and fraught with traps that I'd

concur that Democrats probably won't challenge.  The federal

government's own attorneys have stated that it takes 6 months to

investigate and charge a computer crime in elections.  There are no

election contest statutes of limitations that are anywhere near that

long.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

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