The Carter-Baker Panel "misses the mark" with their election reform proposals...
bbvforums.org
Posted on Monday, September 19, 2005 - 09:01 am:
The formal report of the Carter-Baker Panel purports to be offering election reforms to fix our broken electoral process.
In general, the panel fails to address, or even acknowledge, or see the need for, or even know what the attack trees are for the current voting system -- therefore, it proposes measures that miss the mark, and offers up radical changes without examining appropriate checks and balances. (Links to report at end of this article)
Here is a point by point synopsis of what it says and how it misses the boat:
1: Help America Vote Act
Recommends keeping 2006 deadline and "vigorously enforcing it."
Misses the boat: Pushes systems into the elections process without adequate standards to assure quality, and with very few checks and balances. Costly, both for federal and local governments. Many systems will need to be adjusted, replaced, or jettisoned soon after purchase. HAVA continues to define itself as a collossal example of pork spending and government waste.
2: Voter Registration, top-down systems
The goal is good, the mechanism is flawed. Recommends statewide computerized systems that interact state to state. That is a valid goal.
Misses the boat: The problem is, no one did any analysis of what specific checks and balances are needed to make sure this system (a) is accurate and (b) cannot be used to strategically disenfranchise voters. Like most technology, it must be accompanied by the appropriate safeguards, and they did not address the safeguards, which has the net effect of decreasing election integrity.
3: Voting Technology
Recommends the VVPAT
Misses the boat: Does not recommend how "Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail" must be used. All it says is that "unambiguous methods" must be decided on to reconcile paper with computer, and it recommends that "a decision should be made" as to which is the official record.
Also sidesteps government waste issues: By rushing to HAVA implementation, hundreds of counties got stuck with machines that do NOT produce a VVPAT. Even if the VVPAT was a viable solution (we believe that it will prove not to be viable), this is an excellent example of how rushing ahead with HAVA is becoming an exercise in government waste.
Security: Here is where the most glaring example of inadequacy of all lies. This commission does not appear to even understand the need to define the problem before it proposes solutions.
We knew they'd miss this boat: While in Houston, at the excellent counter-Baker-Carter Panel event put together by Kip Humphrey, I asked a member of the Panel why they had not asked a single question about how hacks can be done. He said it is not necessary to understand how the system can be compromised in order to protect it.
Here's what's needed
In fact, the following procedure is the only way to develop meaningful protections for the system:
- Identify categories of attacks. Example of categories: Software attack, hardware attack, materials attack (ballots, pens, etc.), People attack (bribes, cons, manipulations, favors etc)...
- Identify attack points. Example of attack points: District definitions, ballot access for candidates and issues, voter registration, voter authentication, mail-in voting, vote casting, vote recording, vote tallying, canvassing & reporting...
- Identify specific attack vectors for each of the above. Example: Materials attack - place pens with organic ink into polling places that use infra-red optical scanners when you want more lost votes to occur.
- Assign a risk to each attack vector. Calculate how many people would need to be involved, what level of access, how much it would cost, how much sophistication is required, how many votes could be affected at once.
- Starting with the most high-risk attacks, develop procedures to mitigate the risks
TO DATE, NO ATTACK TREE HAS EVER BEEN DONE. According to Dr. Doug Jones (see his interview in our video library; just click the video camera at top right of our home page) -- when attack trees have been proposed, officials in the elections industry not only don't seem interested in finding out what they are, they say that if attack trees research is done, THEY WON'T READ IT. Their excuse is that they don't want public records available on the subject.
The Carter-Baker Panel seemed to follow this flawed line of reasoning. They decided they could propose a solution to security without defining what the security problems are.
4: Access to voting
Makes vague recommendations about making sure qualified people are allowed to vote.
Misses the boat: It does not appear that they delved into this much. Ohio and Florida would have been great starting points. None of the issues documented with voter purging or failure to authenticate qualified voters were addressed.
The study also makes vague recommendations about mail-in voting, overseas and military voting, and the like, basically saying the situation should be studied and pros & cons evaluated.
5: Investigation of election fraud
Misses the boat: The absence of the existence of any formal attack tree, the lack of understanding of even what we know so far about attack vectors, and the absence of meaningful mitigation procedures was obvious here.
This exceedingly lame section couches the problem in terms of property destruction and attempts to decieve or intimidate voters. They seem blissfully unaware of the new politically correct, kinder, gentler ways to disenfranchise voters through selective purging of voter registration databases and voting machine manipulation.
Read section 5. You'll chuckle at its lameness, before the nausea sets in.
6: Election Administration
The report makes general recommendations that seem mostly aimed at cleaning up the (deservedly) tarnished image that elections administration has achieved.
- It recommends throwing a bit of money at it
Misses the boat: but not in a targeted fashion
- it recommends beefing up the EAC
Misses the boat: but does not appear to recommend any more money for the EAC's joke of a budget
- it recommends doing some research on elections management.
Misses the boat: If followed, the recommendations appear to put an increased burden on local officials and local budgets, without providing any real guidance or financial support.
7: Media
The Panel advises media to provide a bit more access to candidates, for example, a five minute discourse per month among candidates. It makes recommendations about not releasing projections before everyone has voted (aren't we already there?).
Misses the boat: What it doesn't do is make any effort to address keeping nonfavored candidates and parties off the debates, nor does it address the validity of the media's exit polling actions, nor safeguarding the media projections from manipulation as happened in 2000 when a Volusia County voting machine manipulation was used to trigger the media to make an incorrect projection of the presidential race.
8: Observers
Recommends that independent and international observers be allowed if they are "accredited" -- which would mean a citizen would need to obtain credentials before observing the counting of the vote, or attending a Logic & Accuracy test.
Misses the boat: This seems ripe for abuse. They giveth with one hand (states that only allow political party observers should let international and independent observers come in too) while taking away with the other (observers for pre-electon testing, absentee processing, election day events and counting should have credentials issued in advance).
9: Presidential primaries and schedules
They recommend changing the way primaries are scheduled, suggesting giving over power to decide to a group of NASS (National Association of Secretaries of State) members to execute the plans.
Misses the boat: In view of the secretary of states' failure to properly monitor certification and their enthusiasm to rush to paperless touch-screen voting, with the momentum shifting only after a veritable taxpayer revolt, one wonders if this is the correct body of authorities to handle this.
Misses the boat: They want states to hurry up and certify their elections, quicker, faster, but what is simply not mentioned is providing anyone the ability to audit much of anything.
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Here is the report:
american.edu
Here is a summary of recommendations in the report:
american.edu |
