Citizen Input on Hart InterCivic Voting System Contract

[Lou Puls <lpuls@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Citizen Input on Hart InterCivic Voting System Contract
To:
commissioners@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

ILLUSION AND REALITY

It is an illusion that Boulder County is PURCHASING a voting system from 
Hart InterCivic.  Only the hardware and services are being purchased - 
all the software is being LICENSED.  The hardware is off-the-shelf 
equipment that should be leased under competitive bid from 
sub-contractors, not bought at inflated prices when upgrades are 
anticipated and inevitable.  As is commonly done with proprietary and 
closed source software, there is no purchase involved, only a licensing 
for the use of the software - certainly not anything remotely resembling 
the rights, title and interest of a purchase.

It is also an illusion that the voting system can have any semblance of 
security with respect to reliability, accuracy and honesty (regardless 
of its many admirable solutions to ballot ambiguity).  The closed source 
code precludes any level of professional examination as to vulnerability 
to coding defects, which have become a challenge in recent years for 
prankster and outright malicious attacks via viruses, trojans, worms, 
and all the other malware that have wreaked havoc on much of the world's 
desktop, server and infrastructure computers.  The voting software 
includes "Communication" software (at an exhorbitant cost of $10,000) 
which is required for Internet upgrading and remote network vote 
processing, and which will leave the voting system vulnerable to such 
malware and its destructive effects.

There should be no illusion about the widely known failures of Microsoft 
Windows software, on which all of the voting application software is 
based.  Only with heroic effort over the last year has Microsoft issued 
patches for a few dozen of the thousands of severe security defects (in 
the tens of millions of lines of their code) most of which took six or 
seven months to be released after becoming known, announced and
admitted.  Recently 15% of their code was pilfered and widely published on 
the Internet, making it far more available for hacking but not for 
officially sanctioned examination.  To add to such a worst-case 
scenario, the pilfered code included all of their encryption module, 
whose security defects will be particularly vulnerable.  There is no 
rational or conceivable way that Microsoft could provide full patching 
of these present and imminently discoverable defects in time for voting 
machine certification, much less in time for the elections.

If accepted, these illusions lead to an overall illusion of 
trustworthiness in the Hart InterCivic voting system that is totally 
unwarranted, and can only lead to a further erosion of trust in our 
elections.  Only open software (after thorough, ongoing, disinterested 
and professional examination) can be considered a candidate for 
trustworthiness in something as vital as a voting system.  This 
proprietary voting software is closed and insufficiently examined and 
statistically can have no less than one severe security defect per ten 
thousand lines of unexamined code; thus, it will remain unpatched 
even more than by the inferior system that leads to patching Microsoft 
code.  Again, MS Windows operating software is also proprietary and 
closed (except for pilfering), mostly unexamined, notoriously 
defect-ridden, and largely unpatched and unpatchable in any reasonable 
time-frame.

The inevitable result of such a massive lack of digital security is that 
no voter can be assured of the reliability, accuracy, or ultimately the 
honesty of our election results.  This system cannot be considered a 
credible candidate for a trustworthy voting sytem.

Making the leap in logic that we can assume a remedy in the contract is 
possible to attain a trustworthy system, such a remedy should not 
include the PURCHASE, but rather the LICENSING/LEASING of all hardware, 
service, and software components, with the maintenance and renewal of 
such to be contingent on the following contract compliance and performance:

1.  Sine Qua Non - provide open voting software code for critical
   examination;
2.  Require satisfactory Mock Election performance prior to any
   licensing fee payment;
3.  Require satisfactory security performance against specific defect
   attacks;
4.  Require certification to include proof of software upgrades with all
   known patches;
5.  Require recertification upon proof of software patching of all
   subsequent defects.

If such modifications in the proposed contract terms are not carried out 
(if feasible), I submit that the alternative (in lieu of hand-
counted and recountable paper ballots of record, scanned or otherwise) 
is going to involve months of protracted legal actions and injunctions 
in order to protest the possible subversion of our election process.

Lou Puls
2565 Kenwood Drive
Boulder CO 80305