NonScienceNonsense | CTVotersCount.org

A Meeting, A Hearing, and Lots of Nonsense

In the last two weeks there was a meeting of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and a hearing of the House Science and Technology Committee on “Cyber and Voting Machine Attacks”. In total there were seven “experts” giving their opinions along with many of the committee members giving theirs. For the most part, solid facts and reason were missing. The general plan seemed to be officials going overboard in reassuring the public.

One speaker was featured in both meetings, the Louisiana Secretary of State. He claimed, perhaps half joking, that it would take so many conspirators to rig an election that they would be better off just voting for their candidate — that got a lot of laughs, apparently at the expense of those who think our elections are vulnerable. He also claimed that hacking was hard to do since it takes programming skills. Actually programming skills are quite widely known and there are several ways to hack elections that do not require programming skills.

Another was the Secretary of State of West Virginia. She is widely known as a strong proponent of Internet voting. Readers may recall that she came to Connecticut to tout a pilot of Internet voting that was wisely not continued by the West Virginia Legislature. She also declined to describe new voting security measures she has taken, lest they become known. The EAC Committee seemed to agree with that failed theory, known as Security Through Obscurity.

Ironically, that same Secretary of State from West Virginia was given an award at the meeting by the EAC, partially for her strides in security.

Overall there was too much focus on cyber risks, from foreign powers, and from Russia. In the Committee meeting it was accepted that Russia hacked the DNC, although to our knowledge has not been proven.

There were two highlights.

The statement and comments by Dan Wallach from Rice University, the only true expert on election security present in either meeting.
The opening remarks by the Science and Technology Chair. He made a very clear statement of the importance of fair elections to democracy.

<Video of the Science and Technology Committee Meeting>
Lest some accuse me of being alarmist, let me reiterate and add to my position recently expressed in a letter to the Hartford Courant:

The truth is that there is no more or less risk to elections this year than in the recent past. The bad news is that the risks of election skullduggery are significant and do not come only from one adversary.

The risks come from foreign adversaries, domestic interests, partisans, independent hackers, and election insiders including vendors. Elections can be compromised without access to the Internet, without coding, and without altering computers. Political insiders, especially, have the motives and opportunities.

In any one election race the risks are low to moderate, yet the stakes are high. The closer the vote, the less certain the peoples’ votes were reflected in the declared winner. It is too late to do much before November, yet we should not rest once the election is over and decided. The time for deliberate action is in the months and year or two after a presidential election.

Skeptics Guide Part 2: Absence of Evidence is Not Evidence of Absence

A couple of weeks ago, based on claims that exit polls showed that the primary was stolen from Bernie Sanders, I said: “I stand with Carl Sagan who said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

Now we have the reverse situation from the NYTimes: Exit Polls, and Why the Primary Was Not Stolen From Bernie Sanders <read>

I seems like a pretty good case that the exit polls do not prove the election was stolen.

Unfortunately, the Times headline is incorrect. This evidence in this article only claims that the exit polls do not prove that Bernie won. There is no proof that the official results are correct. They may be, they may not be. We still need Evidence Based Elections, providing strong evidence that the results are correct.

Now we have the reverse situation from the NYTimes: Exit Polls, and Why the Primary Was Not Stolen From Bernie Sanders <read>

I seems like a pretty good case that the exit polls do not prove the election was stolen:

All of this starts with a basic misconception: that the exit polls are usually pretty good.

I have no idea where this idea comes from, because everyone who knows anything about early exit polls knows that they’re not great.

We can start in 2008, when the exit polls showed a pretty similar bias toward Barack Obama. Or in 2004, when the exit polls showed John Kerry easily winning an election he clearly lost — with both a huge error and systematic bias outside of the “margin of error.” The national exits showed Kerry ahead by three points (and keep in mind the sample size on the national exit is vastly larger than for a state primary exit poll) and leading in states like Virginia, Ohio and Florida — which all went to George W. Bush.

The story was similar in 2000. The early exit polls showed Al Gore winning Alabama, Arizona, Colorado and North Carolina. Mr. Bush won these states by between six and 15 points. The exit polls showed Mr. Gore winning Florida by six points — leading the networks to call the race before 8 p.m. in the East.

Young Voters Love Exit Polls. Old Voters Do Not.
Younger voters are more likely to complete exit polls than older voters across all interviewer ages.

And the opposing case from Richard Charmin: Response to Nate Cohn of the NY Times <read>

Sierra Club pitches nonscience nonsense for obscure company

It seems that for the Sierra Club, reason and science end at the edge of the environment. They are now touting a product for Internet voting from a company that simultaneously claims that they have a product that is “a revolutionary mobile voting platform designed to securely cast votes in elections across the globe.” while running a Contest awarding $230,000 to actually accomplish that “In this Challenge, we are asking Solvers for help in overcoming the significant obstacles that stand in the way of bringing safe, secure, and easy voting to people worldwide.”

The article link from the Sierra Club goes to Huffington Post: Why You Might Vote For the Next President From Your Couch [Update: Link has been removed from Huffington Post and updated at the Sierra Club] <read> Read what you can about the company, Votem here: <read>

For many years my career in Computer Science involved evaluating software from large and small companies for use in a large company. Later for close to a decade I worked for a couple of small startups, building and marketing data communications software. One of those was successful, started by an engineer with a working product in demand before the doors opened. The other, was started by a serial entrepreneur, who I later learned was also a serial failure. He was good at getting venture capitol and publicity for attractive concepts, lacking feasibility.

My BS detectors go up when I see a company web site touting their revolutionary product, completely missing information on the company structure, missing information on principles, with no customer success stories, and touting their expertise at getting media placement! I am disappointed that the Sierra Club is sucked in.

Electronic voting is far from ready for prime time. I see that the Challenge and award is just for paper designs to solve some of the many challenges of electronic voting. Here is what top security scientists, computer scientists, and voting experts report after an exhaustive study: https://www.usvotefoundation.org/news/E2E-VIV-press

I wonder who Votem will have evaluate the submissions? If their system is already secure as their web site claims, why do they need this help?

My BS detector is confirmed by their blog trashing science and scientists?
http://votem.com/blog/

I see the first entry cites errors by Einstein and others, and claiming therefor that those skeptical about Internet voting are wrong:
http://votem.com/internet-mobile-voting-is-unachievable/

The world is full of experts. Very intelligent and well-meaning people make predictions about our world every day. And because we are all human, many experts get it wrong; and some in a very big way.

Just the same we can point to industry “experts” who have made many “errors” which coincidentally helped their products. We recall the doctors claiming the safety of tobacco, the claims that our nuclear waste problems would be solved years ago, that fracking is safe, that we would all be driving in flying cars by now, and now that some computer systems are unhackable. There are a lot more startups on the scrap heap along with failed corporate and government projects, that Einstein predictions.

The second blog post is entitled “Beware of The Experts”. The third claims support of Republican presidential candidates.

It is as if Sierra wrote positively about a Challenge by a startup energy services company to award prizes for white papers describing how to do safe fracking or building safe oil pipelines, touting they were just around the corner, leaving the impression that we might as well not bother with green technology investment and conservation.

NonScience Nonsense, another claim of electronic voting security

In late June a respected source published a non-peer-reviewed article: The case for election technology Which despite its title is actually a marketing piece disguised as science, not for election technology but for electronic voting, including Internet voting. The case actually made is for skepticism and peer-review.

That skepticism is well addressed in posts by Jeremy Epstein and E. John Sebes: How not to measure security and A Hacked Case For Election Technology

In late June a respected source published a non-peer-reviewed article: The case for election technology <read>. Which despite its title is actually a marketing piece disguised as science, not for election technology but for electronic voting, including Internet voting. The case actually made is for skepticism and peer-review.

That skepticism is well addressed in posts by Jeremy Epstein and E. John Sebes: How not to measure security <read> and A Hacked Case For Election Technology <read>

From Epstein:

But the most outrageous statement in the article is this:

The important thing is that, when all of these methods [for providing voting system security] are combined, it becomes possible to calculate with mathematical precision the probability of the system being hacked in the available time, because an election usually happens in a few hours or at the most over a few days. (For example, for one of our average customers, the probability was 1×10-19. That is a point followed by 19 [sic] zeros and then 1). The probability is lower than that of a meteor hitting the earth and wiping us all out in the next few years—approximately 1×10-7 (Chemical Industry Education Centre, Risk-Ed n.d.)—hence it seems reasonable to use the term ‘unhackable’, to the chagrin of the purists and to my pleasure.

As noted previously, we don’t know how to measure much of anything in security, and we’re even less capable of measuring the results of combining technologies together (which sometimes makes things more secure, and other times less secure). The claim that putting multiple security measures together gives risk probabilities with “mathematical precision” is ludicrous. And calling any system “unhackable” is just ridiculous, as Oracle discovered some years ago when the marketing department claimed their products were “unhackable”. (For the record, my colleagues in engineering at Oracle said they were aghast at the slogan.)

As Ron Rivest said at a CITP symposium, if voting vendors have “solved the Internet security and cybersecurity problem, what are they doing implementing voting systems? They should be working with the Department of Defense or financial industry. These are not solved problems there.” If Smartmatic has a method for obtaining and measuring security with “mathematical precision” at the level of 1019, they should be selling trillions of dollars in technology or expertise to every company on the planet, and putting everyone else out of business.

We would add that just because an election happens over a short period is not a reason to claim any increased level of security or reduced vulnerability:

Programming election systems occurs months and weeks ahead of the election. Systems are vulnerable for their whole life up to and including each election. Its like saying air traffic control systems are not vulnerable to errors because directing each airplane occurs over a very short period of time in each control center. Of course that never happens.
And the rush to provide results quickly, all including the work of tired, lightly trained, technically challenged, and often partisan officials increases the vulnerability.
And the very suggestion of less vulnerability actually can have the effect of reducing vigilance, and increasing risk.

From Sebes:

I also disagree with most of Mugica’s comparisons between eVoting and paper voting because from a U.S. perspective (and I admit this review is all from a U.S.-centric viewpoint) it’s comparing the wrong two things: paperless eVoting verses hand-marked hand-counted paper ballots. It ignores the actual systems that are the most widely used for election integrity in the U.S.

Now, perhaps Mugica’s argument is for eVoting more broadly, without insisting on the paperless part. But in that case, most of America already has some form of eVoting, using voting machines and paper ballots or records, coupled with some form of paper ballot audit to detect malfunctioning machines. In that case, you don’t need to claim mythical security properties along with implied mythical perfect performance. If some equipment doesn’t work right – whether from hacks or good old fashioned software bugs – the audit can detect and correct the results.

1. The Article Misses the Point

This paper completely misses the point that it is not paper-voting vs. electronic-voting, but rather that each is insufficient. In reality, transparent (in technology and process), accurate, secure, and verifiable elections require a combination of people + paper + process + computers, each cross-checking the other. The majority of U.S. election officials now commonly understand this as the norm. Either that, or the author assumes that eVoting includes support for ballot audit (more below), and is arguing against paper-only hand-count elections—a practice that is no longer relevant in the U.S.

2. The Article Ignores Common U.S. Election Practices

“The security of a paper-based, manual vote with a manual count is extremely low. Single copies of each vote make them easy to tamper with or destroy.”

True, but only for the most procedurally simple methods of conducting hand counts or hand audits. Just last week, the state of Wisconsin conducted a public manual ballot audit that was a model of transparency and integrity.

Security is not the main issue for either hand count or machine count. Accuracy is.

We have long held that optical scan, including strong ballot security, sufficient audits and recounts is the best available system today.

Top security official, spouts NonScience Nonsense

Comey’s problem is the nearly universal agreement among cryptographers, technologists and security experts that there is no way to give the government access to encrypted communications without poking an exploitable hole that would put confidential data, as well as entities like banks and power grids, at risk.

We are used to climate change deniers ignoring science and ridiculing scientists. Like frogs in slowly warming water, we are no longer surprised when members of Congress deny science, or members of the public and election officials tout “safe” Internet voting, despite the science showing impossibility of security and the almost daily headlines of serious security failures.

Now we have the Director of the FBI directly contradicting top security scientists – when his job actually requires him to be an informed champion of actual security. This NonScience Nonsense is best summed up in an article this week in The Intercept: FBI Director Says Scientists Are Wrong, Pitches Imaginary Solution to Encryption Dilemma <read>

Testifying before two Senate committees on Wednesday about the threat he says strong encryption presents to law enforcement, FBI Director James Comey didn’t so much propose a solution as wish for one.
Comey said he needs some way to read and listen to any communication for which he’s gotten a court order. Modern end-to-end encryption — increasingly common following the revelations of mass surveillance by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden — doesn’t allow for that. Only the parties on either end can do the decoding.

Comey’s problem is the nearly universal agreement among cryptographers, technologists and security experts that there is no way to give the government access to encrypted communications without poking an exploitable hole that would put confidential data, as well as entities like banks and power grids, at risk.

In my early teens, a friend who did not do well in school smoked. It was a time when the dangers of smoking were just becoming public, with heavy and obviously false denial by the tobacco companies. My friend said “If they are right, by the time I would get cancer, the scientists will have come up with a cure.” At that time there was a lot of blind faith in science, cheered on by the media, that anything was possible – like curing cancer, going to the moon, or flying cars in cities of the future. Science frequently surprises us with miraculous developments, yet there are no miracles. We have no cities of the future, we have not gone to the moon, hunger has not been cured, leisure and the middle class are endangered along with the planet. Yet, we have miraculous cell phones and the Internet, along with inaccurate and distorted ideas of risks and fears. Some fears are overblown and unjustified, while in other areas we have a false sense of security.

Director Comey runs an agency which for years has claimed unquestioned expertise in matching fingerprints, blood samples, and hair samples, all of which have proven highly inaccurate, with little proof of accuracy in practice or in theory.

Sadly and dangerously, Comey’s blind faith combined in scientists coupled with distrust of those same scientists is matched by many in Congress:

Comey said American technologists are so brilliant that they surely could come up with a solution if properly incentivized.

Julian Sanchez, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, was incredulous about Comey’s insistence that experts are wrong: “How does his head not explode from cognitive dissonance when he repeats he has no tech expertise, then insists everyone who does is wrong?” he tweeted during the hearing.

Prior to the committee hearings, a group of the world’s foremost cryptographers and scientists wrote a paper including complex technical analysis concluding that mandated backdoor keys for the government would only be dangerous for national security. This is the first time the group has gotten back together since 1997, the previous instance in which the FBI asked for a technical backdoor into communications.

But no experts were invited to testify, a fact that several intelligence committee members brought up, demanding a second hearing to hear from them.

Hopefully Congress will hear from scientists – scientists who represent objective, predominant security expertise – and Congress will listen to them.

Non-Science: “What you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” – Mark Twain

Non-Science Nonsense is bad enough. But even worse is what we all thing is true that is not. Five examples from just the FBI and our common understanding, as articulated in The Intercept: Five Disturbing Things You Didn’t Know About Forensic “Science”

When it comes to voting, the public, election officials, and legislators believe many false facts,

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” – Mark Twain

When it comes to voting, the public, election officials, and legislators believe many false facts, including:

Secure/safe Internet voting – no such thing yet proven, and unlikely at least for years
Military Level Encrypton
- There is no such official definition
- The military has been unable to protect its networks and secrets
- Encryption is not a panacia
Email/fax voting is not Internet voting
- Email uses the Internet
- Email is hacked all the time, and is available to the NSA, Google, ATT etc.
- Fax uses the equivalent or the actual Internet
Internet banking is safe – banks lose billions each year to Internet fraud
Voting is the same as banking – Voting is harder to secure that banking
Connecticut’s Post-Election Audits have proven our scanners are always accurate
- The audits have been conducted in a manner that would not recognize errors
- Our scanner results have been inaccurate, audits have discovered errors
- Fraud has been shown to be possible with our scanners at any time
Time to stop auditing since the scanners have been proven accurate
- Audits of Taxes, Business, and Government will always be necessary

We can be sure there are many more that we all believe, or most of us believe.

Ignore this post – it is based on facts and reason.

Like Don Quixote, we have spend almost seven years tilting at myths. Unlike Don, we arm our posts with facts and reason. According to a new report, that is a losing strategy.

Note: That report itself is based on facts, reason, and that most untrusted Science, known as statistics. Therefore, it is unlikely that the report will make a significant difference.

Like Don Quixote, we have spend almost seven years tilting at myths. Unlike Don, we arm our posts with facts and reason. According to a new report, that is a losing strategy.

Note: That report itself is based on facts, reason, and that most untrusted Science, known as statistics. Therefore, it is unlikely that the report will make a significant difference. Yet, we remain committed to our best efforts to base our recommendations on facts and reason.

New York Times: When Beliefs and Facts Collide <read>

Do Americans understand the scientific consensus about issues like climate change and evolution?

At least for a substantial portion of the public, it seems like the answer is no. The Pew Research Center, for instance, found that 33 percent of the public believes “Humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time” and 26 percent think there is not “solid evidence that the average temperature on Earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades.” Unsurprisingly, beliefs on both topics are divided along religious and partisan lines. For instance, 46 percent of Republicans said there is not solid evidence of global warming, compared with 11 percent of Democrats.

As a result of surveys like these, scientists and advocates have concluded that many people are not aware of the evidence on these issues and need to be provided with correct information. That’s the impulse behind efforts like the campaign to publicize the fact that 97 percent of climate scientists believe human activities are causing global warming.

In a new study, a Yale Law School professor, Dan Kahan, finds that the divide over belief in evolution between more and less religious people is wider among people who otherwise show familiarity with math and science, which suggests that the problem isn’t a lack of information. When he instead tested whether respondents knew the theory of evolution, omitting mention of belief, there was virtually no difference between more and less religious people with high scientific familiarity. In other words, religious people knew the science; they just weren’t willing to say that they believed in it.

Mr. Kahan’s study suggests that more people know what scientists think about high-profile scientific controversies than polls suggest; they just aren’t willing to endorse the consensus when it contradicts their political or religious views…

The deeper problem is that citizens participate in public life precisely because they believe the issues at stake relate to their values and ideals, especially when political parties and other identity-based groups get involved– an outcome that is inevitable on high – profile issues. Those groups can help to mobilize the public and represent their interests, but they also help to produce the factual divisions that are one of the most toxic byproducts of our polarized era.Unfortunately, knowing what scientists think is ultimately no substitute for actually believing it.

We see such from partisans of all stripes, when we work to disrupt the “common wisdom” on election issues, tilting with facts and reason:

Internet Voting. No matter the theoretical risks of the Internet attested to by Scientists, the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, and our CT utilities regulatory authority, and actual breeches by the NSA, foreign governments, bank fraudsters, and hackers, objections are met with claims of complete confidence in election officials to provide secure voting systems.
Voter Fraud. There is very little actual fraud by individual voters – the challenge is to get people to vote – very few illegal aliens would risk their deportation to vote. In any case, most cases of fraud or voting in error would not be prevented by voter ID.
Mail-in Voting (Absentee Voting). Here sides change. It is more convenient to vote by mail for many. Yet at what price. There is proven absentee voting fraud after almost every national election. Opening up to more mail-in voting, simply opens up more opportunity and benefit for fraud. Like climate change denial, we have many that deny the fact and opportunity.
Electronic Voting without audits and recounts. Officials and many in the public subscribe to the belief that “If it seems to work and I have noticed no problems, then it must be safe”. Just like nuclear power, DDT, and many other risks, our intuition can be wrong.

Until a year ago many thought that the NSA spying on everyone was a myth. Today, many still believe that “I have nothing to hide, so they can look at all my emails, bank accounts, and health records”. For those with those beliefs, please send me all your passwords (and be sure not to encrypt the email).

Worse than Hurricane Sandy? As bad as climate denial?

A new ZD-Net Editorial: Internet voting: A really bad idea whose time has come

Summary: Believe it or not, most states have some provisions for allowing people to vote over the Internet. The pressure is on to expand it, even though a secure online voting system is impossible using today’s technology.

Climate denial might end human life or at least life as we know it. Internet voting denial can only wipe out our democracy.

A new ZD-Net Editorial: Internet voting: A really bad idea whose time has come <read>

Summary: Believe it or not, most states have some provisions for allowing people to vote over the Internet. The pressure is on to expand it, even though a secure online voting system is impossible using today’s technology.

We have been saying it over and over. In Connecticut, only the Secretary of the State, Denise Merrill gets it. The Senate and House have passed Internet voting twice, unanimously. Governor Malloy vetoed it the first time because it is risky and unconstitutional, nothing changed, yet he signed it the next time.

Its similar to ‘climate denial’, in that both ignore the risks, ignore the science. In Connecticut its thus proven that science denial is not just for Republicans – here its bipartisan and almost unanimous. We do not want to compare the two exactly. Climate denial might end human life or at least life as we know it. Internet voting denial can only wipe out our democracy.

The area on the Jersey shore where I grew up was hit very hard by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. It was many weeks before some of the people could even go home. Life was a mess. And then, a little over a week later, was the 2012 election day.

The state made it clear that they would make whatever accommodations it could to help people vote if they were displaced by the storm. So far, so good, but my ears perked up when I heard about “email voting.”

Yes, the state announced that voters could email in a vote. This was part of an effort to make all non-traditional forms of voting, including mail-in and fax, easier. In fact, voters were instructed to ignore the part of the relevant web page where it says “The County Clerk cannot accept faxed or emailed copies of a Application for Vote by Mail Ballot, unless you are a Military or Overseas Voter, since an original signature is required.”

But certainly such circumstances were sui generis, and no sane state authority would contemplate Internet voting in the normal course of things, right? Wrong…

Speaking of around the world, Estonia is the current poster child for electronic voting. Estonians at home and around the world can vote online using a national ID card, a smart card. Clearly a system of digital national IDs has no chance of being adopted in the US, but for all its sophistication, the Estonian system is still vulnerable to tampering according to recent research…

In fact, it’s easy to find research by people who understand computer security pointing out the considerable risks from internet voting. There are other people who would like to increase turnout no matter what and who are happy to declare that all technical problems can be worked out by the experts. Well, the experts have spoken: Internet voting is not and cannot be made secure with current technology.

Goodbye Sandy, Goodbye Science, Goodbye Secret Voting

Like other disruptive events, storm Sandy is being used to justify very questionable emergency voting changes in New Jersey. The Lieutenant Governor of New Jersey has announced virtually unlimited fax and email voting – some would say this is the camel’s nose in the elections tent – I would say it is more like the other end of camel.

The Patriot Act was justified and passed quickly after 911. It contained many legally questionable items that law enforcement had wanted for years. Crises are used for that. Fortunately we have avoided mercenaries securing the Northeast, like BlackWater securied New Orleans after Katrina. Hopefully our schools will not be transformed like those in New Orleans.

Andrew Appel has written a post describing some of the problems with this: NJ Lt. Governor invites voters to submit invalid ballots <read>

We see already one problem: The loss of the secret ballot. At many times in the 20th century, NJ political machines put such intense pressure on voters that the secret ballot was an important protection. In 2012 it’s in the news that some corporations are pressuring their employees to vote in certain ways. The secret ballot is still critical to the functioning of democracy.

But there’s a much bigger problem with the Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno’s directive: If voters and county clerks follow her instructions, their votes will be invalid.

Her directive reads, “Any voter who has been displaced…is hereby designated an `overseas voter’ for the purposes of the Overseas Residents Absentee Voting Law, N.J.S.A. 19:59-1 et seq.” But the New Jersey Statute (at 19:59-15.4) requires an additional step that Lt. Gov. Guadagno omitted from her directive:

“N.J.S.A. 19:59-15.4(a): Immediately after a copy of the voted overseas ballot or federal write-in absentee ballot has been transmitted by electronic means to the appropriate county board of elections, as permitted pursuant to section 3 of P.L.1995, c.195 (C.19:59-14), the overseas voter shall place the original voted ballot in a secure envelope, together with a certificate substantially the same as provided for in section 9 of P.L.1976, c.23 (C.19:59-9), and send the documents by air mail to the appropriate county board of elections.“

According to the update at the bottom of the post, that the directive may be corrected or clarified so that the paper ballot is required to be submitted, possibly disenfranchising voters who do not learn of the added requirement in time. Yet at least several problems remain:

Are voting officials really able to comply with the directive and handle the volume and votes properly?
The security of Internet voting is highly questionable, with email and fax voting among the most questionable methods.
The secret ballot should not be waived by individual voters, or its purpose will be lost.

As I commented on the Appel post:

The Secret Ballot was implemented to avoid selling votes and coercion of votes. It should be a right for all voters that no vote can be sold or coerced. A single voter cannot in reality waive all the other voters’ rights that every ballot be secret or the purpose is lost.

And as Barbara Simons commented:

I agree that these ballots might end up in court, especially if the election is close. Since not everyone has equal access to the Internet, and people without power won’t have any, Bush v. Gore might be used to challenge the results. In addition, it’s not clear that the Lieutenant Governor has the authority to create a new class of voters by designating displaced voters to be in effect overseas voters. Finally, it will be impossible to recount votes cast over the Internet unless the Lieutenant Gov. acts on the recommendations in this article. And even then, as Andrew has noted, the situation will be murky.

FEMA needs to create contingency plans so that when emergencies occur before or during an election, there are securely stored backup paper ballots and provisions for producing new ones as needed.

Barbara Simons, co-author “Broken Ballots: Will Your Vote Count?”

We have many posts covering the risks of Internet voting, but now we can also refer to an excellent peer reviewed article by Barbara Simons and Doug Jones: Internet Voting in the U.S. <read>

The assertion that Internet voting is the wave of the future has become commonplace. We frequently are asked, “If I can bank online, why can’t I vote online?” The question assumes that online banking is safe and secure. However, banks routinely and quietly replenish funds lost to online fraud in order to maintain public confidence.

We are told Internet voting would help citizens living abroad or in the military who currently have difficulty voting. Recent federal legislation to improve the voting process for overseas citizens is a response to that problem. The legislation, which has eliminated most delays, requires states to provide downloadable blank ballots but does not require the insecure return of voted ballots.

Yet another claim is that email voting is safer than Web-based voting, but no email program in widespread use today provides direct support for encrypted email. As a result, attachments are generally sent in the clear, and email ballots are easy to intercept and inspect, violating voters’ right to a secret ballot. Intercepted ballots may be modified or discarded without forwarding. Moreover, the ease with which a From header can be forged means it is relatively simple to produce large numbers of forged ballots. These special risks faced by email ballots are in addition to the general risks posed by all Internet-based voting schemes.

Many advocates also maintain that Internet voting will increase voter participation, save money, and is safe. We find the safety argument surprising in light of frequent government warnings of cybersecurity threats and news of powerful government-developed viruses. We see little benefit in measures that might improve voter turnout while casting doubt on the integrity of the results.

Almost all the arguments on behalf of Internet voting ignore a critical risk Internet-based voting shares with all computerized voting—wholesale theft…

The cost of Internet voting, especially up-front charges, can be steep. For example, 2009 cost estimates from Internet voting vendor Everyone Counts were so large that a legislative proposal in Washington state to allow Internet voting for military and civilian voters was killed in committee. The estimated costs, obtained by John Gideon of VotersUnite, included proposed up-front costs ranging from $2.5 million to $4.44 million. After that, each county would have been hit with an annual license fee of $20,000-$120,000, plus $2-$7 per overseas voter…

Internet voting does not necessarily increase turnout. Everyone Counts ran an Internet-based election in Swindon, U.K., in 2007 and a local election in Honolulu, HI, in 2009 where votes were cast only by Internet or telephone. The Electoral Commission, established by the U.K. Parliament, determined that Internet voting in Swindon had a negligible effect on turnout; meanwhile, in Honolulu there was an 83% drop in turnout compared to a similar election in 2007. We know of no rigorous study of the impact of Internet voting on turnout; conducting such a study would be difficult, since turnout can vary enormously from election to election. But even if Internet voting could increase turnout, the increase would be irrelevant if the election results were at risk of corruption by insecure Internet use.

Still not convinced? We suggest reading the entire article, we have highlighted just a few points.

Book Review: Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America

When it comes to election integrity, we note the many articles on elections and election reform are often emotional, subjective, one-sided, or inappropriately balanced. The same lack of rigor is often present in arguments raised by and to election officials and legislators considering election reform. We ignore facts, reason, and open debate at our peril.

The context for many of our posts and all of our editorials is science. Endeavoring to understand and highlight the facts associated with elections impacting election integrity, reasoning from those facts, encouraging open debate, and choosing alternatives based on facts and reason. There are limits to science and reason: Some facts are difficult to establish, there are trade-offs, subjective values, and future speculation involved. Yet, we ignore facts, reason, and open debate at our peril.

The initiatives for voter Id and unlimited absentee balloting. One side claiming massive voter fraud and the other claiming a dearth of document fraud. While the reality derived from the facts available seems to indicate very rare individual voter fraud, but cases of deliberate multiple absentee voter fraud discovered in several localities after every election. Reason adds that deliberate multiple vote frauds are much more likely to effect results than individual frauds.
Internet/online voting is technically risky and open to fraud. We constantly read that “If we can do banking online, we should be able to do voting online” – with little recognition of the science that says voting is more risky and the significant level of banking fraud, especially given that banking fraud is much easier to detect than voting fraud. We seldom hear the question “If an army private can access all the secrets on military computers, how can anyone make online voting safe on personal computers?”
We hear calls for Election Day Registration and unlimited absentee balloting in the name of increasing turn-out, yet little recognition of the growing evidence that Election Day Registration increases turn-out, but that unlimited absentee voting does not increase turn-out, may actually decrease turn-out, and the speculation that early voting may actually help well financed candidates.
In Connecticut we hear how burdensome the post-election audits are on town budgets and the inconvenience to election officials. We seldom hear that statewide the audit costs are just a small fraction of the costs of printing ballots, and a percent or two of the salaries of the election officials who are inconvenienced in the interests of public integrity and confidence in elections.

The recent book, Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America, articulates the need for science, the scientific method, and their increasing banishment from public discourse. Despite our own experience dealing with this problem in and with the media, legislature, congress, and in discussions with officials, reading this book provided additional insight into the causes and dangers of ignoring science as a basis for society.

Some of the insights I gained from the book:

In the name of saving money, almost all newspapers have eliminated their science sections.
It is not considered appropriate to discuss science in the political section of newspapers, however, it is fine to discuss economics and religion.
The author was one of many suggesting a science debate during the 2008 presidential election, with many petitioners, the debate was rejected by both campaigns. Many science questions were suggested to moderators in other debates in areas such as stem cells, global warming, etc. In all the debates, only a couple of science questions were asked, ironically in the two religion debates.
Excluding medical professionals such as Senator Paul and Representative Paul we are down to one scientist in the entire Congress, Representative Rush Holt from New Jersey.
The pubic and scientists are cultured to believe that science should be accomplished quietly in the laboratory and that it is inappropriate for scientists to be at the table and part of the public debate. (So, when election technology is discussed it is presumed that election officials and vendors can sufficiently represent the science and technology at the table).
Still many of our public policy questions involve science and applications of the scientific method; Global warming, fracking, health, defense technology, NASA projects, and disease prevention. Many issues involve detailed economic and statistical calculations or could benefit from rigorous scientific studies including public health, crime, punishment, improving the economy, creating jobs, the value and funding of entitlement programs.

A couple of snippets:

The Great Dumbing Down

…As a result [of newspapers cutting science sections], Americans find themselves in an absurd and dangerous position: In a time when the majority of the world’s leading country’s larges challenges revolve around science, few reporters are covering them from the scientific angle.

In Europe, by contrast, just the opposite is happening: Science coverage has increased. A 2008 analysis of prime-time news on selected European TV stations showed that there were 218 science-related stories (including science and technology, environment, and health) among 2,676 mews stories aired during the same week in the years 2003 and 2004, and eleven-fold increase since 1989. And in the developing world, science is “flourishing”

Republican Science

By its very nature science is both progressive and conservative.

conservative: retentive of knowledge and cautous about making new assertions until they are fully defensible

and

progressive: open to wherever observation leads, independent of belief and ideology, and focused on creative knowlege

It would thous be a mistake to characterize scientists as mostly Democrats or mostly Republicans. They are mostly for freedom, creativity, caution, and knowledge — and not intrinsically of one or another party. In the early twenty-first century the party that most stands for freedom, openness, tolerance, caution, and science is the Democratic Party…

Early in the twentieth century this situation was almost reversed. Republican Abraham Lincoln had created the National Academy of Sciences in 1863. Republican William McKinley, admired by Karl Rove, won two presidential elections, in 1896 and 1900, both times over the anti-evolution Democrat William Jennings Bryan, and supported the creation of the Bureau of Standards

Finally, we note the contradictions in the often held beliefs that science can solve any problem: “If we can go to the moon, those scientists can solve global warming, protect us from nuclear waste, and make internet voting work if they would just work on it” and almost simultaneously strong questioning of the consensus scientific views that we are near irreversible global warming and that the earth is more than 10,000 years old.