Dangers of Internet Voting Confirmed. Foreign $ in US Elections?

Verified Voting's Pres.interviewed by Fox D.C. about DC Internet Voting Pilot. In spite of experts saying otherwise, DC's BoE still thinks they can make internet voting secure. Really? Then Google & DoD may wish to hire DC officials to teach them how. The video testimony is up on YouTube, making it easier to share on Facebook & blogs...Early voting centers at colleges teach students...Big Spending by Outside Groups, but No Disclosure..Pakistan pilot program for electronic voting...

All this and more in today's voting news below...

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CA: Voting by mail can result in unintended consequences
http://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/columns/oped_contributors/Voting-by-mail-can-result-in-unintended-consequences-104551994.html Early voting has changed the arc of campaign planning and lowered the value of late campaign developments.

CA: Solano County's mail-in ballots could be delayed
http://www.thereporter.com/news/ci_16296563 Delays at the postal distribution center in Sacramento are holding up the delivery of some vote-by-mail ballots to voters in northern and eastern Solano County, elections officials said Friday.
...
People registered to vote by mail who have not received their ballots by Wednesday should contact the Registrar of Voters Office at 784-6675.

CO: INSIDE THE BLACK BOX …..YOU VOTE … BUT “WE” COUNT …
OH, BY THE WAY “WE” DOES NOT INCLUDE YOU…
http://authenticallywired.com/2010/10/09/nside-the-black-box/

CO: Weld clerk to post deputies at vote centers
Some worry about voter intimidation
http://www.greeleytribune.com/article/20101009/NEWS/101009690/
1002&parentprofile=1001 http://tinyurl.com/29num2h

DC: D.C. Council hearing sums up election: Poor training and preparation
http://www.wikiusnews.com/3044/d-c-council-hearing-sums-up-election-poor-training-and-preparation.html

LA: Election night returns slowed by computer problems
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2010/10/election_night_returns_slowed.html
Jacques Berry, a spokesman for the secretary of state, said there were two problems.
One was "very, very slow" transmission of data from a computer at the office of Orleans Parish Clerk of Criminal District Court ArthurMorrell, where Orleans returns are collected, to the secretary's officein Baton Rouge.

The other problem was a lack of adequate bandwidth on election night for the secretary's website, which was overwhelmed when, among otherthings, more people than expected logged on seeking election returns.

MI: Ottawa County clerk apologizes for second costly election ballot printing error in four years* http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2010/10/ottawa_county_clerk_apologizes.html
The glitch -- the office's second ballot error in four years -- affected ballots sent to about 1,400 voters and carries a $48,570 cost for ballot reprints.
The clerk's office omitted the names of Natural Law Party candidates Stacy Kohmescher, candidate for the state Board of Education, and Doug Dern, candidate for Wayne State University's Board of Governors.

NC: You would think voting would be easy for a servicemember....nnnope
http://www.onemarinesview.com/one_marines_view/2010/10/you-would-think-voting-would-be-easy-for-a-servicemembernnnope.html I hope you take the opportunity to vote this year and every year offered. I, being one of many servicemembers deployed overseas that desire to vote via absentee voting wanted to vote but wasn’t successful. (sorry Walter B Jones North Carolina 3rd you didnt get my vote because our absentee system is all jacked up)

NC: Campaign cash, flowing from where?
http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/10/10/729577/campaign-cash-flowing-from-where.html

NJ: Judge finds no evidence of voter fraud in Paterson
http://www.northjersey.com/news/crime_courts/104622224_Judge_finds
_no_evidence_of_voter_fraud.html http://tinyurl.com/2d4z7tx The election day results showed McDaniel leading Rodriguez by 25 votes. That margin narrowed to six votes after provisional ballots were counted. A June 2 recount ordered by Brogan included 49 unopened mail-in ballots, discovered in a closet at the office of the Board of Elections a day before the recount was scheduled. Rodriguez won the recount, 5,239 to 5,198.

NY: NY comptroller notes voting machine problems
http://www.13wham.com/news/state/story/NY-comptroller-notes-voting-machine-problems/LVAVo9mYXEGYQ1SJavaNGQ.cspx

SC: Irony in push to get people to vote absentee
http://www.thetandd.com/news/opinion/editorial/article_f1688288-d327-11df-8a30-001cc4c03286.html

TX: Student support brings back UT campus early voting location
http://nonprofitvote.blogspot.com/2010/10/student-support-brings-back-ut-campus.html
University President Robert Nelsen, who called the county’s elected officials in a push to get the site restored, said he would work with Hidalgo County to make the university a permanent site. Beyond being convenient for students, he views it as a teaching tool.

“It isn’t natural to go vote. You have to learn it,” Nelsen said. “If it’s there (on campus), and you vote for the first time, it’s a real learning experience.”

Internet Voting Watch

Dangers of Internet Voting Confirmed
http://blog.verifiedvoting.org/2010/10/10/1037
“For years, computer security experts have said that casting ballots using the Internet cannot be done securely. Now, after a team from the University of Michigan successfully hacked the Washington D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics (DCBOEE) public test of Internet voting, we have a visceral demonstration of just how serious the threats really are…”

Verified Voting President Interviewed by Fox D.C. Affiliate About Internet Voting Pilot http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/article.php?id=6783 (Video)
President of VV Pam Smith, DC BoE Rokey Suleman and
Pam Smith:The problem arises when you use electronic transmission of the voted ballot...
Rokey Suleman: People expect us to have this...

Internet Voting Halderman Testimony part 1, October 8, 2010 YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaR7n5PI_aE
Prof. J Alex Halderman of the University of Michigan describes how he and a team of students gained the ability to alter votes and violate voter privacy in an internet voting test conducted by Washington, DC. The testimony took place on October 8, 2010. This is Part 1.

Internet Voting Halderman Testimony part 2, October 8, 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDHtSU4qKzw&feature=related

Hacking Into Washington’s Online Voting Experiment
http://deepquest.code511.com/blog/2010/10/10/hacking-into-washingtons-online-voting-experiment-2/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=hacking-into-washingtons-online-voting-experiment He (Prof Halderman) said he also saw signs that computer users in Iran and China were trying to crack the system’s master password which his team obtained from an equipment manual. (Network administrators had never changed the four-character default password.) He said that the foreign hackers were probably not specifically trying to break into the District’s voting system, but that they represented a threat nonetheless...

Voting Test Falls Victim to Hackers
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/09/us/politics/09vote.html
Hackers infiltrated the District of Columbia’s online voting system last week. They changed all votes for mayor to Master Control Pro and elected HAL 9000 the council chairman. The blaring University of Michigan fight song played whenever a new ballot was successfully cast.
...
“The next set of people who test it will find a whole new set of problems,” Jeremy Epstein, a computer scientist at the policy group SRI International who was also critical of the voting system, said Friday during an interview.

D.C. voting pilot program filled with security holes
http://www.wtop.com/?nid=25&sid=2073741
The team found the default password in an owner's manual. Halderman could then monitor the network from his computer in Michigan and see BOEE administrators working in real time. The team also gained access to a pair of publicly-accessible security cameras in the BOEE data center that could be used to watch employees typing in passwords.

Halderman and his team also made another discovery.

"While we were in control of these systems, we observed other attack attempts originating from Iran and China," Halderman says.

Washington State: Coalition Calls For Halt to E-mail Ballot Program
http://blog.verifiedvoting.org/2010/10/09/1018
This week, as University of Michigan computer technologists revealed in stark fashion the risks of Internet voting, Verified Voting, Common Cause, and Voter Action worked to halt an effort to expand the electronic return of voted ballots in Washington State.
...
Of all potential forms of electronic ballot return, e-mail poses some of the severest security challenges, including denial of service attacks, and essentially unmitigable risks to voter privacy; most states that allow e-mail ballot return require that the voter waive any to a secret ballot.

India: Gujarat civic elections witness first-ever online voting
http://www.ndtv.com/article/cities/gujarat-civic-elections-witness-first-ever-online-voting-58739
It was for the first time that any State Election Commission allowed on-line polling. The response to the introduction of new polling system, however, was not very encouraging with few people opting to vote on-line.

"124 e-votes were polled today in the elections to six municipal corporations," State Election Commission secretary P S Shah told PTI.

National

Topic of Foreign Money in U.S. Races Hits Hustings
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/09/us/politics/09donate.html

Big Spending by Outside Groups, but No Disclosure
http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/2010/10/08/big-spending-by-outside-groups-but-no-disclosure/

International

Canada: Most Welland voter cards are garbage
http://www.wellandtribune.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2794117
A glitch in a commercial computer program purchased by the City of Welland to generate voter notification cards has resulted in more than 23,000 incorrect cards being mailed out to voters.

Kyrgyz parliamentary elections can be considered as invalid – Umetalieva
http://eng.24.kg/politic/2010/10/10/14090.html Only our political organization has recorded not less than 20 serious violations of the Code on Elections of Kyrgyzstan. By 3 p.m., the CEC gives country-wide permission for moving the voting papers from urns to bags and boxes, which is not specified by the Code that clearly says: opening of urns is prohibited until official vote count,” she emphasizes.

According to Toktayim Umetalieva, “one more crying violation is the all-round presence of members of Patriot voluntary people’s guards, who protect the polling stations of the country, but some of them are members of one of the political parties, participating in the elections.”

Pakistan: EC to bring in electronic voting machines
http://www.pakistaninewspapers.info/archive/10/ec-to-bring-in-electronic-voting-machines/
ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission has decided to introduce Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and plans to conduct a pilot project during local government polls expected next year.
...
The sources hoped that substantial foreign funding would be available for the project aimed at making election results in Pakistan credible.


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