In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
Making Votes Count: Setting Standards for Fair ElectionsThe Election Assistance Commission, a federal body set up after the 2000 election mess, has created a group called the Technical Guidelines Development Committee to propose federal electronic voting standards to Congress this spring. This committee includes outspoken supporters of electronic voting without paper trails, including Britain Williams, a retired Kennesaw State University professor who has worked closely with Georgia on its controversial adoption of Diebold voting machines. But disappointingly, the commission did not include any of the many respected computer scientists - such as Prof. Aviel Rubin of Johns Hopkins, Prof. David Dill of Stanford or Dr. Rebecca Mercuri - who have been warning about the unreliability of electronic voting in its current form.Ahhh the federal government at its finest. This committee meets in a conference room across from the National Oil Tanker Safety Committee which consists of the board of Exxon and Chevron and is chaired by Captain Joseph Hazelwood himself. Down the hall is the Internet Security Committee which consists of only Microsoft Windows engineers. The floor above is taken up by The Committee for Sustainable Peace which meets regularly and consists of board members of Halliburton, Carlyle Group, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman Corp, and Boeing.
The election commission is expected to rely heavily on standards being developed by a nonprofit association of engineers, computer scientists and other professionals with the unfortunate acronym of I.E.E.E., which develops technical standards for such things as wireless communications. But the voting machine industry plays a disconcertingly large role in this organization. The chairman of the working group preparing the standards for voting machines is a top executive of Election Systems and Software, a large and controversial voting machine maker. The head of the committee that oversees the working group has a seat on the election commission's voting machines standards committee. He is a consultant who has been hired in the past by companies in the elections field. Because of the insular nature of the engineering panel's meetings, ordinary voters - who have an important stake - have had little chance to participate. Over the objections of some members of the working group, the current draft of the election-machine standards merely makes voter-verified paper trails optional. The draft's scope is also too narrow: it fails to address many ways in which vote totals could be rigged.
- rob 3:20 PM - [PermaLink] -
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