Electronic Vulnerability

On Saturday October 1st, I was pleased to be a part of the The Future panel at the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project event, Election Integrity - Past, Present & Future. The event was to celebrate the 25th anniversary of a conference on voting integrity 1986.

Rigged election or three human errors - we may never know for sure.

To be reasonably sure that the correct candidate is officially designated as the winner in a race with a write-in candidate, it would be prudent to assume the possibility of a 25% undercount of write-in votes. Then require a recount of all write-in votes in a race where the write-in candidate received at least 42% of the votes in a two candidate race (or 42% of the votes necessary to win in a more than two candidate race.)

Distortion obscures the real story and learning available from the 2004 Ohio case. This is a seriously risky and vulnerable system, both from its complex, weak design and outsourcing to partisans. Elections results should be accumulated by computer and human systems that we can trust.

We frequently highlight stories of election error and fraud nationwide. We do this as a service to provide references to counter the frequent statements from election officials and legislators claiming no record of such errors and fraud.

Reading and listening to the media we are led to believe that flip-flopping is the worst possible political sin. Wrong. Much of the time we spend writing, voice-mailing, or speaking with legislators is working to convince them to understand a more complete picture; to change their positions on issues.