Programmer testifies that he wrote election fraud software for FL Republican

[Joe Republic]

A computer programmer named Clinton Eugene Curtis testified under oath before the U.S. House Judiciary Members in Ohio (back in 2004) that he had written software in 2000 that could defraud election results in favor of Republican congressman Tom Feeney.

Click on this link to watch a video of the testimony.


A partial transcript:

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[Joe Republic]

In a related story, I also stumbled upon this post in another political forum.

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Now don't forget to vote in this thread's poll.  Don't worry, I won't try and hack it.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

What curtain?

The way they have the voting booths set up here, you have enough privacy to cast your vote secretly, but not enough to be tampering with the machine unless the access port happens to be in plain sight, which it ain't.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Voting should be done by pencil (or pen or whatever) and paper.

[Jake]

Voting should be done by pencil (or pen or whatever) and paper.

Agreed.

And Ernest is right. The curtain here does not allow you to crawl on the floor and tinker with the machines at all.

[DanielX]

Voting should be done by pencil (or pen or whatever) and paper.

I suggest a bubble-in voting system, similar to a ScanTron. Allows for electronic vote tallying with less risk for fraud.

[Joe Republic]

Voting should be done by pencil (or pen or whatever) and paper.

Agreed.

Me too.  Sometimes the simplest method is also the safest and best.

[Nym90]

Do I trust the machine? Yes, it simply does what it's told to do.

Do I trust the people writing the software? If the code is not released to the public, no.

[Citizen James]

I've been around the programming industry long enough to know that the only  program that is bug free is "hello world" (and other ultra-simple training variants).

No OS is 100% secure.  Even industrial strength UNIX varients have ways of gaining root or psudo-root access.  I've seen it done by an expert (who fortunately uses his powers for good, rather than evil).

I've been around the buisness world enough to know that a company that makes ATM's is capable of printing reciepts.

I don't trust any system that doesn't leave a human readable paper trail for verification.

[J. J.]

I've been around the programming industry long enough to know that the only  program that is bug free is "hello world" (and other ultra-simple training variants).

No OS is 100% secure.  Even industrial strength UNIX varients have ways of gaining root or psudo-root access.  I've seen it done by an expert (who fortunately uses his powers for good, rather than evil).

I've been around the buisness world enough to know that a company that makes ATM's is capable of printing reciepts.

I don't trust any system that doesn't leave a human readable paper trail for verification.

But let's be blunt, voting fraud has existed in paper and pencil balloting and I believe all others as well.  The only question that I have is if this is more prone to fraud.

[Akno21]

No, I don't trust electronic voting machines. They need paper trails at the very least, and even that is not 100% secure. In Florida during the 2000 election at least there was something to count, even if it was a question of whether a chad was poked out or not.

Personally, making sure that we have a perfect (or as close to perfect as humanly possible) way of counting votes fairly should be a top priority. I don't see how we can truly pride ourselves on democratic values if we have so much trouble counting votes. The integrity of our voting system is really the basis for this country, and if we cannot be sure that our elections are fair, it's all downhill from there.

[minionofmidas]

Who's to say a paper trail will say the exact same thing that the computer saves inside? As long as you're not trying to get any voting booths record 100% results, a paper trail doesn't help you at all.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Who's to say a paper trail will say the exact same thing that the computer saves inside? As long as you're not trying to get any voting booths record 100% results, a paper trail doesn't help you at all.

The idea is that it gives the voter a receipt they can use to verify their vote, and then put it in a ballot box, this allows for a manual recount.

We do something like that kind of in Minnesota, we use paper ballots, but an optical scanner machine counts them. However a handful of precincts are randomly selected for a manual recount, to see if there was any serious flaws in the machine counting. Without any such safeguard possible and everyone expected to simply trust the machines, I would in no way support electronic voting.

[minionofmidas]

Who's to say a paper trail will say the exact same thing that the computer saves inside? As long as you're not trying to get any voting booths record 100% results, a paper trail doesn't help you at all.

The idea is that it gives the voter a receipt they can use to verify their vote, and then put it in a ballot box, this allows for a manual recount.

Ah, alright. You need to make sure people put them in the ballot box, though.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

What can be done is to also have some verification code on each receipt, and that code must be entered before the vote is counted within the machine. If the voter just decides to walk off with their receipt for some bizarre reason, their vote is then not counted.

[Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon]

Electronic machines are the only kind of machine that I trust.

Why do people trust paper more than a computer?  There have been thousands of cases of fraud with paper ballots.  At least with an electronic voting machine I know that I wont be discrminated against because of my skin color or party affiliation.

If an electronic machine is trustworthy enough to handle my money, its more than good enough to handle my vote.

[afleitch]

Electronic machines are the only kind of machine that I trust.

Why do people trust paper more than a computer?  There have been thousands of cases of fraud with paper ballots.  At least with an electronic voting machine I know that I wont be discrminated against because of my skin color or party affiliation.

If an electronic machine is trustworthy enough to handle my money, its more than good enough to handle my vote.

Like when ATM's spit out extra notes by accident Just have a paper, mark it with an X fold it and pop it in a box. Problem solved, no one can see who you voted for and when your vote falls in the box, it is indistinguishable from the hundreds of other votes.

[Citizen James]

Electronic machines are the only kind of machine that I trust.

Why do people trust paper more than a computer?  There have been thousands of cases of fraud with paper ballots.  At least with an electronic voting machine I know that I wont be discrminated against because of my skin color or party affiliation.

If an electronic machine is trustworthy enough to handle my money, its more than good enough to handle my vote.

And yet, ATM machines are able to print reciepts if you want them - along with confirmation numbers which you can use to verify your transaction should there be a dispute.

[Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon]

Electronic machines are the only kind of machine that I trust.

Why do people trust paper more than a computer?  There have been thousands of cases of fraud with paper ballots.  At least with an electronic voting machine I know that I wont be discrminated against because of my skin color or party affiliation.

If an electronic machine is trustworthy enough to handle my money, its more than good enough to handle my vote.

And yet, ATM machines are able to print reciepts if you want them - along with confirmation numbers which you can use to verify your transaction should there be a dispute.

...so that someone can stuff extra receipts in the box in order to cause an election dispute.

[Joe Republic]

Electronic machines are the only kind of machine that I trust.
...
At least with an electronic voting machine I know that I wont be discrminated against because of my skin color or party affiliation.

If an electronic machine is trustworthy enough to handle my money, its more than good enough to handle my vote.

Did you not even read the first post of this thread?  Surely, judging by your own line of work, you realize that people are responsible for the way a computer can function?

The problem is not in fact wholly with the actual machines, but with the people who design and operate them.  When partisan organizations build the voting machines and partisan government officials count the votes, that's when we can start talking about matters of trust.

Why do people trust paper more than a computer?  There have been thousands of cases of fraud with paper ballots.

From what I understand, Britain has been using paper ballots pretty much since they introduced secret voting, and there has been virtually no significant cases of fraud in about a century (is that right, Al?).  How come they can do it right but we can't?

[Rob]

The poll results are very telling.

[Joe Republic]

I was just thinking the same thing.  Perhaps the results might be different if the chairman of Diebold had been an outspoken supporter of the Democratic party instead of the GOP, and the guy in the first post had testified that he wrote software that would favor a Democrat instead of a Republican.

Or maybe the results of the poll were hacked.

[Nym90]

Electronic machines are the only kind of machine that I trust.

Why do people trust paper more than a computer?  There have been thousands of cases of fraud with paper ballots.  At least with an electronic voting machine I know that I wont be discrminated against because of my skin color or party affiliation.

If an electronic machine is trustworthy enough to handle my money, its more than good enough to handle my vote.

Would you trust an ATM if the bank refused to ever give you a bank statement?

[Nym90]

As I said earlier, I think the real issue is that the code should be freely available to the public. So long as the code can be viewed, computer programmers on both sides of the partisan divide will definitely be scouring over it for any malfeasance involved within.

I agree that electronic machines are in theory the best way to vote, so long as the programmers can be trusted, but it's ridiculous to just blindly assume they are honest upstanding people who would never taint the results when it could be done so easily.

[J. J.]

I trust electronic voting more than I trust paper or punch card ballots. 

Why?  I can figure out how to fix those (we actually discussed this in a poli sci course).  I can't figure out how to fix election software.

That said, there are people out there that can.  This might make elections more secure, but not secure.