Published in The Australian Financial Review

The Business Council of Australia and the Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull are in conflict over when the Parliament should vote on an emissions trading scheme (“Copenhagen a ‘red herring’”, 25 August). All sides are divided. Copenhagen is not a red herring but a lame duck because everyone is focused on the wrong vote.
A vote by experts is the only robust way to measure expert opinion on the science and economics of global warming. Without it no one has authority to represent the experts and the most basic questions of climate change science and economics will remain unanswered. Vested interests will determine the outcome. It may be a dangerous overreaction or expensive and useless under-reaction to the actual threat.

The public has a right, and policy makers an obligation, to really know expert opinion on the issue. And the expert opinion that matters is the current consensus of experts and its sensitivity to change. Accurate reliable measurement of this consensus is a critical bit of scientific data missing from the debate.

The IPPC attempts to be the authority on the science. However the IPCC’s measurements of scientific opinion are neither robust nor objective, regardless of intention. The use of working groups is an efficient way to condense peer reviewed scientific papers and other material into a single less technical report. However this process does not guarantee that the authors of the scientific papers endorse the IPCC reports. The process also excludes the views of many scientists qualified to comment on the published research. Without the vote doubts remain and its voice weakened.

Financial derivatives risk theory is based on robust arbitrage pricing formula. Yet the “rocket scientists” in banking led the world into an economic fire storm with an unscientific risk measure called value at risk, without real debate or a vote. Neither the climate scientists or economists have risk measurement models remotely as accurate as the financial scientists — another reason not to repeat the same errors in open debate and opinion measurement.

The Parliament should require scientists and economists to vote online before it votes. Have all relevant scientific and economic bodies invite their members to participate in a regular global and secure vote. Give every expert equal control over the voting agenda. Make the voting records, credentials and funding sources of each expert transparent. Let the vote to run continuously enabling experts to revise their votes any time. Technically there is no risk or reason to delay a vote. It could start today.

Published version - AFR - 3 Sep 2009

SecurityFocus has published an article detailing some of this election cycle’s voting concerns with electronic voting.

One of my previous co-workers used to do IT work for the county, and one of his responsibilities was being there with the auditors to verify the voting machines.  He said that, even with the small county we live in, it takes hours to get the few e-voting machines passed inspection, and he couldn’t imagine what it was like for the bigger ones.  The machines are “supposed” to have every hardware component checked, but a new faster process doesn’t check every component; he finally gave up arguing with the auditors when it was obvious it was a dead-end conversation.

I just can’t understand why it is so difficult to get an electronic voting machine to work correctly and securely.  I don’t know if it is cheap Chinese parts, crappy programmers, or what, but it is just astonishing that someone can’t make an e-voting machine that is simple, easy for even the elderly to use, prints out the voter’s vote for verification, and is secure.  It really doesn’t seem that difficult, but, apparently, people manage to screw that up.

Here is the SecurityFocus article:

Concerns continue to shadow e-voting
Published: 2008-11-03

As the United States readies for a historic presidential election, voting and security experts continue to push for better checks on the machines that will record and tally up the ballots.Over the past month, scattered reports of electronic voting machines that have “flipped votes” — marking a vote for a different candidate than the one selected — has worried some election experts. The issues have been reported in Colorado, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia, although an online video that appeared to show the problem has been assailed as misleading, according to Wired News.

Election officials have told voters to not be disheartened by the reports and to check that their vote is correctly recorded at the polls. West Virginia’s Secretary of State Betty Ireland advised voters to double-check their ballots and not to be afraid to ask for help.

“For those citizens who have not yet voted, Secretary Ireland advises those voters to notify a poll clerk if they experience any problem at the voting booth, to ask for help, and to keep that poll clerk there until the voter is satisfied they have cast their vote as they intended,” Ireland’s office said in a statement (pdf). “This may include moving to another machine, if that is the voter’s wish.”

Election experts continue to call for audits that are machine independent as the best way to catch flaws and fraud at the ballot box.

Only a third of the states do a truly meaningful audit following the election, Pam Smith, president of Verified Voting, told reporters in September. Because uncovering evidence of fraud could lead to dissension and distrust among voters, some election officials have decided that its better to not know about fraud, Smith said.

“The thought that it’s better not to know is really a danger to our democratic system,” she said, underscoring that audits do not really cost that much. “One election director in California estimated that it’s pennies on the dollar.”

States rushed to adopt electronic voting machines following the close election in 2000, which saw hanging chads and a Supreme Court challenge to the result. Yet, while some voting-machine makers pushed touchscreen machines that had almost no checks on the integrity of the systems, computer-security experts have called for voter-verifiable and machine-independent methods of recounting the vote.

No matter which party wins Tuesday’s election, the outcome will make history: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama could be the United States’ first African-American president, while Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin would be its first female vice president.

If you have tips or insights on this topic, please contact SecurityFocus.

Posted by: Robert Lemos

Transparency of the entire voting system has never been more important, and each voter should be able to verify that his or her vote is protected and correctly recorded in the final tally. The challenge is revealing the secret ballot process without sacrificing the privacy that democracy relies on. Computer scientists, lead by cryptographer David Chaum, say they have found a solution that uses invisible ink to protect voter confidentiality. The Scantegrity II (invisible ink) system, was unveiled at the USENIX/ACCURATE Electronic Voting Technology Workshop. The system uses a regular pen and a special decoder pen for use on a ballot that looks like a normal fill-in-the-dot ballot. Voters make their selections by marking the bubble next to their candidate of choice with the decoder pen. A two- or three-letter code will appear in the bubble. The ballots’ serial numbers, as well as the invisible codes, have all been created and recorded by voting officials before the election to eliminate the possibility of ballot stuffing. Voters can record their ballots’ serial numbers and codes to verify their vote was counted. The ballot is then scanned through an optical scanner. Chaum says that even if only one or two percent of voters go online to check their receipts, it will create a 95 percent chance that no fraud occurred.

Click Here to View Full Article

The Brazilian TSE’s voting machine simulator (requires Java)

The Última Instância (Brazil) legal news service reports:

• TRE-SP diz que urna encontrada por pedestre ainda não pertencia ao tribunal

The state elections authority of São Paulo says in a press release that a voting machine found in the street by a passerby was not one of theirs and no one knows how it ended up falling off a truck.

O TRE-SP (Tribunal Regional Eleitoral de São Paulo) emitiu nota por meio de sua assessoria para informar que a urna eletrônica (modelo 2008) encontrada dentro de uma caixa na manhã desta quinta-feira (7/8), por um pedestre na avenida Condessa Elisabeth de Robiano, 950, próximo à avenida Salim Farah Maluf, no Belém, em São Paulo, estava sendo transportada pela Diebold Procomp Indústria Eletrônica Ltda. e ainda não pertencia a Justiça Eleitoral.

… the 2008 model electronic voting machine found in a box on Thursday morning by a pedestrian on Av. Condessa Elisabeth de Robiano, near Av. Salim Farah Maluf, in the Belém neighborhood of São Paulo, was being transported by Diebold Procomp Industria Electronica Ltda and was no longer the property of the elections authority.

Segundo o tribunal, a Diebold foi contratada para confeccionar urnas eletrônicas após vencer licitação feita pelo TSE (Tribunal Superior Eleitoral).

The state elections authority (TSE-SP) said that Diebold was hired to manufacture electronic voting machines after submitting a winning bid to the federal elections authority (TSE).

They hired Diebold Procomp? Again? Really? The name is memorable for an incident in the 1980s  in involving Air Force technicians, Procomp, and phony running results broadcast over TV Globo in a failed bid to defraud the Rio de Janeiro gubernatorial elections.

People have not forgotten that. I have been meaning to read Plim Plim, P.H. Amorim’s book on the case. Recently re-released, I think.

You would think the company would change its branding, at least, the Philip Morris did, to Altria.

“A urna, encontrada no trajeto entre a Procomp e a Justiça Eleitoral, não contém programas nem qualquer dado sobre as eleições”, diz a nota..O pedestre que encontrou a urna acionou a PM (Polícia Militar) e foi encaminhado ao 81º Distrito Policial, no Belém, onde foi registrado boletim de ocorrência. O distrito averiguará por meio de investigação policial como a caixa transportada pela empresa foi encontrada no local.

“The voting machine found along the route between Procomp and the Elections Authority did not contain software or any election data,” the note said. The pedestrian who found the machine called the military police and was sent to the 81st Police Precinct in Belém to file a report. The precinct will investigate how the box being transported by Diebold Procomp came to be in that location.

This is a potentially sensitive issue because previous voting frauds have involved the “cloning” of voting machines — the preparation of unregistered machines with a predetermined result that are switched with the machines used on election en route to the tallying center.

I will have to see what the folks at Voto Seguro think of this. On whom see also

• The Technological Sublime is the Last Refuge of a Scoundrel: The Fairy Tale of Brazilian Digital Democracy
• Brazil: E-Vote Skeptics Get a Second Hearing
• Brazil: E-Vote Gets the Attention of Congress
• Brazil: “Consultor Jurídico Sounds False Note on E-Vote”
• NMM(-TV)SNBCNNBS: Fake News and Voting Machines Down South American Way
• Brazil: E-Vote Evangelists Duck Debate
• “The People Have Faith in E-Voting, II”: Fake News in Prime Time, Brazilian Style

Video explicativo del proceso de voto electrónico desde el ensamble de la urna hasta como se despachan los votos sufragados.

Parte 1

Parte2

Parte 3

Parte 4

]]> http://leblog2roubaix.wordpress.com/2007/10/25/216-economie-sociale-et-solidaire-isabelle-cousin-region-nord-pas-de-calais/ Thu, 25 Oct 2007 13:02:31 +0000 Bruno http://leblog2roubaix.wordpress.com/2007/10/25/216-economie-sociale-et-solidaire-isabelle-cousin-region-nord-pas-de-calais/

Madame Isabelle Cousin est une des actrices importantes de la promotion des TIC en région, et en particulier sur les cyber-centres au sein d’une volonté forte du Conseil Régional Nord Pas-de-Calais.

Eric Dos Santos est déjà venu à Roubaix lors de la Fête d’Internet. Lors du Forum Mondial de l’E-démocratie, il nous explique Feedback 2.0, un logiciel en ligne qui peut être utilisé dans une consultation ou d’aide partagé de la décision.

Comme me l’a présenté Alexandre, on pourrait très bien imaginer une série de propositions (de conseillers municipaux, de quartier, de jeunes, etc…) qui, au bout d’un certain taux de recommandation (clics positifs) fassent l’objet d’une incription en conseil municipal. Bref, un outil de l’e-democratie participative !

Une démo est ici.

Maria Helena Cautiero Jardim est universitaire de Rio de Janeiro et elle évoquait les accès gratuits de la ville de Pirai. J’en ai profité pour lui parler du Budget Participatif comme évoqué avec Paulo.

Au Forum Mondial de l’E-Democratie organisé à Issy-Les-Moulineaux, voici dans le bus du Parlement Basque, Andrès nous présente la machine à voter, qui est en fait une machine qui compte les bulletins de vote et permet d’avoir les résultats dès la fin du scrutin.

Feriez-vous confiance en une machine ?

Propun sa aruncati un ochi asupra propunerii estone. In esenta e-stonienii (pun intended) au vazut ca treaba cu votul electronic prin Internet functioneaza multumitor si se gandesc sa faca urmatorul pas logic, introducerea votului prin intermediul telefonului mobil, adica votul M sau “m-voting” cum ii zic ei. Ideea mi se pare coerenta, totul e ca sistemul sa fie sigur si sa faca foarte bine identificarea votantului, cred eu.

Asta in timp ce noi romanii avem mari probleme in a adopta folosirea votului prin corespondenta. De vot electronic nici nu aduc vorba.

Daca n-ar fi limba absolut imposibila m-as muta in E-stonia…

Aïe, il va être difficile pour moi d’aller voter aux prochaines élections après ce que j’ai dit ici. Pourvu que les machines à voter électroniques de Bourg-de-Péage restent au rencart en 2007 – comme elles le sont restés pour le référendum européen.

Remarque, faut voir le bon côté, ça m’évitera d’avoir à choisir…

Jean-Félix Guillaume et Didier Pupel , maires de Bourg-de-Péage, me font l’honneur d’une réponse à mon article critiquant les machines à voter Nedap (lui-même publié par L’Impartial, le 27 mai), dans L’Impartial du 3 juin, sous le titre “La transparence est garantie”. N’ayant hélas pas été destinataire de ce communiqué (je rappelle que ce site est ouvert aux commentaires et que tout un chacun peut réagir aux articles postés), je vous renvois à votre hebdomadaire local pour en prendre connaissance.

Quoiqu’en disent les auteurs de cette réponse, il reste et demeure, qu’en l’état, en utilisant ces machines à voter, en tant qu’électeur, je n’ai aucune trace et preuve que la liste pour laquelle j’ai voté a bien été correctement enregistrée par la machine (qui me prouve que quand je vote pour le PS par exemple, elle n’enregistre pas un vote pour Les Verts ?).

Bien évidemment, les communes ayant opté pour ces machines peuvent difficilement subir le camouflet d’avoir choisi un système trop rapidement sans s’être ou avoir été suffisamment informé sur les défauts de celui-ci. Dans cette affaire, le ministère de l’Intérieur est certainement également allé trop vite dans les autorisations accordées et n’a pas fait le travail de vigilance et d’information qui lui incombait. Mais l’autorisation du ministère de l’Intérieur n’est en rien un blanc-seing accordé aux collectivités locales.

En tout cas, contrairement à ce que pense les édiles péageois, il est plus qu’utile de mettre le doute dans l’esprit des citoyens : d’abord parce que ceux-ci doivent toujours penser par eux-mêmes et se faire leur opinion en prenant les avis de chacun et non pas en prenant comme une vérité ce qu’on leur raconte, ensuite parce qu’on ne peut faire une confiance aveugle ni dans les technologies ni dans les autorités de tutelles.

Pour info, France 3 Rhône-Alpes-Auvergne revient sur l’événement (avec vidéo !)… mais sans une once de critique. On rappellera donc encore une fois que des critiques, nombreuses, existent. Sur la question Irlandaise, je laisserai mes concitoyens consulter par eux-même le rapport (.pdf) et comme Margaret McGaley jauger de de ce qu’il “stipule” par eux mêmes.

Les machines à voter Nedap ne sont pas un “cap pour la modernisation” mais un pas en arrière pour la démocratie

Les machines à voter qu’utiliseront les Péageois pour les élections européennes du 13 juin prochain, comme quarante autres villes françaises (Bourg-de-Péage n’est pas encore dans la liste établie par le ministère, mais un nouveau décret doit prochainement être publié pour signaler de nouvelles villes autorisées), posent problèmes aux tenants de la démocratie. Ce qui pourrait être “un cap pour la modernisation”, comme s’en félicitait Jean-Félix Pupel, maire de Bourg-de-Péage dans L’Impartial du 13 mai 2004, ne risque-t-il pas surtout d’être un piège pour la démocratie ?

Bien qu’autorisées et validées par le ministère de l’Intérieur – qui n’est pas à l’abri des erreurs -, les machines à voter Nedap, du nom de leur fabricant Néerlandais, présentent, par plusieurs aspects, des absences de fonctionnalités qui ont déjà fait réagir de très nombreux citoyens et associations.

Parmis les griefs qui sont reprochés à ces machines notons qu’elles :

- ne fournissent aucune trace papier d’un vote permettant à l’électeur d’avoir l’assurance que la machine a enregistré son vote correctement et à la collectivité de procéder à un décompte manuel en cas de contestation. Alors que cette fonction de double impression aurait dû être exigées dans les spécifications des machines homologuées.

- sont, dans l’immense majorité des cas, des boites noires. Comme le dit François Nonnenmacher : “Au contraire du système électoral français traditionnel, qui est non seulement transparent mais placé sous la surveillance de simples citoyens comme vous et moi, il est impossible à un citoyen de connaître le fonctionnement “intime” de ces machines. Certains pensent que c’est une garantie contre les fraudes, je fais partie de ceux qui pensent que c’est au contraire du pain bénit pour les fraudeurs. La machine à voter est le parfait exemple de technologie qui devrait se conformer aux principes de l’open source, avec une totale transparence du code et de l’architecture technique.” […]

- sont à l’origine déjà de nombreux incidents de comptabilisation aux Etats-Unis notamment. En Irlande, la commission chargée d’évaluer le système Nedap a anoncé dans un rapport (.pdf) qu’elle ne pouvait garantir la fiabilité de ces machines et le respect du secret du vote et ont donc été rejetées par les autoritées Irlandaises.

Face à ces incertitudes, de nombreuses questions restent en suspends auprès des pouvoirs publics et dans ce dossier, visiblement validé trop rapidement par les autorités françaises, les citoyens sont en droit de s’interroger et de s’alarmer de l’absence de transparence qui entoure ces machines. Nous ne participerons donc pas à l’admiration technologique béate, sans poser la question du respect des exigences démocratiques que tout citoyen est en droit d’attendre et qui ne sont pour l’instant pas remplies.