As it is said when it comes to voting technology: As California goes, so goes the nation. To that end, there is some disturbing news on the horizon from BlackBoxVoting.org as the Internet Voting virus threatens to spread to the Golden State.
If you’re not familiar with the many insane dangers of this idea, and if the Academy Awards’ recent nightmare wasn’t enough, here’s an article or two or three or four from the past year or two here which should do well to appropriately scare the hell out of you.
In the meantime, here’s how BBV cuts to the chase — and the core — of the real concerns of Internet Voting, as the anti-democratic profiteering vultures descend into the state…
They tell us Internet voting is secure. It’s not. It’s not secure, and can’t be made secure, but that’s not even the point.
The point is it’s not transparent. The whole premise in our Constitution is that we self-govern. To do that, the public must be able to see and authenticate essential processes, like who actually voted and the vote count, and that is not possible with Internet voting.
Internet voting transfers all control to whoever runs the server. (The server is just a computer that sits in a room — and one Internet voting company, Scytl, has its server physically sitting in Spain.)
Internet voting gives the administrator complete control over the front end (who put the votes into the system) and the back end (the counting of the votes).
Internet voting is trying to come on with a vengeance, and not just in California. It is now imminent. Unless we are vigilant, many of us will be forced to vote online in 2014 and 2016. Lobbyists are at work to persuade your legislators to install Internet voting.
Political support has been secured from officials in several states. The governor of Hawaii has announced he wants Internet voting. Secretaries of State from Connecticut, West Virginia, Washington, and Oregon are already pushing online voting, and soon you’ll hear about it near you. Federal bills promise cash to states that “expedite” their voting systems, with vague language as to what that means.
Because Americans are skeptical about Internet voting, politicians and reporters describe it as “smart phone voting” and “iPad voting.” They also call it “convenience voting” but what they don’t tell us is that, in exchange for convenience, we will lose the ability to self-govern.
To put this into blunt terms: It’s not whether Internet Voting is or isn’t secure. (It’s not, but that’s actually beside the point.) It’s whether you, or anybody else, can ever know that it’s secure. And the hard, cold, scientific fact is that you cannot.
More on “Ting’s Thing” from BBV here…
Oh good, another really fucking stupid idea to take up more of our time and energy to refute. My goodness we are in insanely stupid country.
David –
Ya think? Sigh…
In the real world viruses are now known to be good for the most part, but here we are not talking about the real world, we are talking about the election world.
What happened to Debra Bowen?
–
The Lottery numbers are ping-pong balls randomly selected flying in air currents. Because everyone knows that’s fair.
The Lottery could save money by having a computer pick the winning numbers … ‘randomly’. But everyone knows computer numbers can be hacked, rigged, and preprogrammed. Everybody knows.
Don’t trust computer secrets. Put ping-pong balls out in open view of a transparent container.
It’s the difference between analog and digital number-picking.
I mentioned this during a recent conversation, that ‘Americans’ require a transparent analog procedure to pick winning lotter numbers but let a secret computer program elect authority officials. And the keen reply said, “well yeah, with lottery numbers there is personal money on the line.”
… as not, compared with ballots.
CA Assemblyman Phil Ting has proposed what MIT Prof. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Ronald L. Rivest described as the “oxytopian” solution.
“Secure Internet voting,” Rivest proclaimed, “is a bit like the phrase ‘safe cigarettes.'”
I almost think I would rather go with the ping pong balls than the internet voting. Why can’t we just use hand-counted, hand-marked paper ballots?
Soul Rebel
“What happened to Debra Bowen?”
Good question. I’ve wondered if all the votes for labeling food were counted or more aptly miscounted.
Somebody should start some investigative reporting on the salaries of Secretaries of State. Have they gone up exponentially since the US does not try to hide the fact anymore that our elections are fixed..i.e. Karl Rove on Fox News caught in an honest moment. The UN just helping us out in our last elections by observing a very few hot spots.
If a device is electronically cast, in my opinion it can be altered or/manipulated.
WW,
Yes, we are all of that opinion here.(If I may arrogantly and presumptuously speak for the BB Universe.)
Wanda White @9 wrote [emphasis added]:
This doesn’t entail opinion. It is the basic reality of computer science.
Thus, we find CIA Cyber Security expert Steven Stigall warning the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission that “wherever the vote becomes an electron and touches a computer, that’s an opportunity for a malicious actor potentially to…make bad things happen.”
Hello Brad Friedman,
I will keep repeating the phrase over and over until I am unable to utter it or even have it written that “America is the largest outdoor insane asylum on planet Earth”! At the rate we are devolving it most likely that this statement will be true for decades if not centuries into the future.
RE: What happened to Debra Bowen?
Every time Internet Voting has shown it’s ugly face, Debra Bowen has been there to fight it. This is true of SB 908 in 2011 (see http://countedascast.org/sb908/), and AB 1929 in 2012. She will certainly be there to fight AB 1929.
What readers must realize is that there are very powerful forces, including the Federal Voting Assistance Program at the Pentagon and corporate money, pushing Internet Voting. Their code phrase is “meeting the expectations of young people”, which translates into voting on your cell phone. They will not stop. This will be a decades-long struggle across 50 states until we get a federal bill requiring the use of paper ballots in all federal elections.
Correction: Bowen will be there to fight AB19, as she did fight AB 1929
Further consideration: The Internet Voting forces are waiting for Bowen to term out as Secretary of State in 2014. It is imperative that we identify and get behind someone soon that we can trust to replace her.
Ting is a democrat?