Re: Election in Boulder County nullified on constitutional grounds?

["Bo" <bs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Makes it easy to argue when you take both sides, doesn't it?

I won't even dignify an answer to someone who slams another's wife.....

What's next Ralph?
Gonna rail on Tiger for his "religion"?

You've dropped so far down the ladder you could pass under a snakes
belly.....

Sad.....

Bo

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ralph Shnelvar" <ralphs@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <paul.tiger@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: "Citizens for Verifiable Voting" <cvv-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>;
"Mcgrath, Bob___PI_Mkt" <bob.mcgrath@xxxxxxxxxx>; "'LPBC Chairman'"
<chairman@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>; <AlKolwicz@xxxxxxxxx>; "Carol Mehesy"
<cmehesy@xxxxxxxxxxx>; "Donna Plutschuck" <donna@xxxxxxxxxxxx>; "Monty
Lambie" <mlambie@xxxxxxxxx>; "Pete Klammer" <PKlammer@xxxxxxx>; "Peter
Raich" <peter.raich@xxxxxxxx>; "Tracy Abell" <TresCeeA@xxxxxxx>; "Tom
Halicki" <thalicki@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; "Nancy Jo Wurl"
<nwurl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; <board@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>;
<chair@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; <chair@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, August 09, 2004 8:38 PM
Subject: Re: Election in Boulder County nullified on constitutional grounds?


> Mr. Tiger:
>
> On Mon, 9 Aug 2004 18:10:02 -0600, you wrote:
>
> >There's nothing about the barcode on the ballot that identifies the
voter.
>
> Wrong.
>
> >
> >"He then went on with a bunch of irrelevancies."
> >
> >My 'irrelevancies' point to the issues of voter and ballot fraud. I might
> >assume from your insistence that ballot not be uniquely identified that
you
> >would like to encourage ballot fraud. The barcode identifies the ballot,
not
> >the voter.
>
> You can serialize the ballot inside the computer after it is cast.
>
> Or the ballot could be printed with a holographic image to make it
difficult
> to duplicate ... or any of a number of other ways to may it difficult to
> stuff ballots into a ballot box.
>
> >
> >Please describe a method to all that have been addressed here how this
> >barcode can be used to identify the voter that cast the ballot. Inquiring
> >minds want to know.
>
> God, Paul, if you'd think for a couple of minutes then maybe you'd not
make
> a fool of yourself.  I provide the answer, below.  But I suggest you think
> about what you wrote.  I'm quoting you:
>
> > [|>] The bar code on the sides of the ballots identify the ballot
> > style, not the individual ballot. Ballot style is about what issues a
> > person can vote on in a particular geographical location. My wife and
> > I would have the same ballot style in a general election, but
> > different in a primary. We live in the same house, but we are members
> > of different parties. I get a Libertarian ballot, she gets a
> > Democratic ballot. If we were members of the same party the barcodes
> > would be identical.
>
> And, by the way, at least in my house my wife is a registered Libertarian.
>
> >
> >Paul Tiger
>
>
> I hope you gave it some thought, Paul.
>
> Here's the answer.  It's called "vote selling".
>
> Part of the purpose of a secret ballot is to make it difficult or
impossible
> to do vote selling.
>
> In vote selling what happens is that you sell your vote to someone for
money
> (duh!).
>
> The problem is "How does the buyer know that the seller has kept his
> promise"?  It is a multi-step process.
>
> Step 0: A valid ballot is mailed from the County Clerk to the proper
voter.
>
> Step 1: Voter X scans/faxes the ballot to seller.
>
> Step 2: Seller Y stores the ballot image on his computer.
>
> Step 3: Voter X votes.
>
> Step 4: Voter sends in ballot.
>
> Step 5: Ballot with identification is scanned it at the County.
>
> Step 6: All scanned ballots are stored in County computer.
>
> Step 7: Let's say that there are 100,000 votes cast.  Each vote is stored
as
> a .jpg  and is, say,  600K (two 300K b&w images) in size.  That's a total
of
> 60 gigs of data.  Today that 60 gig drive can be bought for a lot less
than
> $100 and easily fits in a coat pocket.
>
> Step 8: Unscrupulous out-sourced temporary employee Z take drive with
> scanned images to Seller Y.  Seller Y now scans his 60 gigs of data at 25
> megabytes/sec for a total time to match a particular vote seller in 40
> minutes.  It wouldn't take much more than 40 minutes to match a couple of
> thousand purchased/sold votes against that database.  Looking for barcodes
> at fixed positions in scanned images is fast ... as anyone who has
purchased
> a bottle of milk at the supermarket knows.
>
> Note that all of this matching becomes (nearly) impossible if there is no
> serialization (barcode) number.
>
>
>
> So let me put some objections into Paul's mouth.
>
>
>
> (1) No one buys or sells votes.
>
> The history of voting is full of vote buying and selling.  One of the
> objectives of a secret ballot is to minimize this possibility.
>
> See, for instance, http://slate.msn.com/id/91418/ in which 1,131 Illinois
> residents put up there votes for sale in 2000.
>
>
> (2) You've got to have a dishonest employee to copy an entire database.
> Security at the County Clerk's is so tight ...
>
> If entire computer disks can be stolen out of Sandia National Labs where
> national security concerns are so high ...
>
>
>
> (3) Hey! This only applies to absentee ballots!
>
> What proportion of ballots need to be cast absentee in order to swing an
> election?  It isn't much and there is a bigger and bigger push to have
> mail-in ballots.
>
>
>
> Can I identify Paul Tiger's vote just given a barcode?  I don't know.
Part
> of my problem is that I don't know the internals of the computer system
that
> is counting the vote.
>
> Assume that Paul votes at a polling place.  I do know that somewhere a
> computer spit out a ballot and barcode for a Libertarian Party ticket that
> Paul Tiger eventually filled out and was eventually scanned in.
>
> I don't know if the Hart machinery time-stamps the scanned-in image.  (How
> would I find out?  Ask the vendor?  Trust the vendor?)  Thus it wouldn't
be
> too hard to guess that a particular ballot matched with a particular voter
> just based on the intersection of time, district, and (third) party
> affiliation.  There are seven-hundred-or-so Greens in Boulder County.  If
> they all voted in person I bet you I could make a really good guess as to
> which ballot went with which voter.
>
> But I'm only guessing.
>
>
>
> Thirty years ago I made my living as a research assistant doing
econometrics
> on a variety of projects.
>
> There was a famous (and now forgotten) story back then about the "bionic
> data set".
>
> There was a TV show that I never watched called "The Six Million Dollar
> Man". In the show he was known as "The Bionic Man."
>
> Anyway, there was this longitudinal and time-seies dataset of thousands of
> people. The dataset was so constructed that the anonymity of the
> participants was supposedly guaranteed.
>
> For reasons I don't remember, they desperately needed to add another year
of
> data to the time series.  But the dataset was something like the census
> tract data in which it is supposedly impossible to get individual census
> data from the summary data.
>
> Well, they spent an additional $6,000,000 (hence the "bionic dataset")
going
> through the data looking for clues about where people lived and how many
> children they had, their general age, etc.
>
> They eventually managed to reconstruct the underlying respondents even
> though this was in breach of contract.
>
> But, hey, this was a government agency so contracts with individuals
really
> didn't mean much because there was a government need.
>
> Anyway, this lesson proved to me that confidentiality can often be broken
by
> effort.  In this case it was just a bunch of government bureaucrats
> interested in some time-series data.
>
> Imagine what resources unscrupulous people would throw into an important
> election.
>
>
>
> The bar-coding of ballots is not just a theoretical threat.  It's a real
> encouragement of vote buying/selling.
>