Re: Boulder County DA Should Investigate County Elections Office, Instead

[Ralph Shnelvar <ralphs@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Nick:

On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 17:30:11 -0600, you wrote:

>Maybe I'm being stupid,

No, you are not.

>but I still don't get it. If I want to buy 
>somebody's vote, I offer to pay them some money if they vote for my guy. 
>I tell them to make a special  squiggle on the ballot. Then I get that 
>extra disk you talked about. I don't need that mark to be on the ballot 
>beforehand.

Because a special squiggle is easily identifiable.  It may send up a flag
that something is afoot ... especially if there are similar squiggles on
multiple ballots.

A special "squiggle" (bar code/serial number) inserted by the government
makes such detection much harder because no special squiggle is needed.

>
>Or, if we're assuming that I have help from an unscrupulous employee, 
>why don't I just ask that employee to help me set up a hidden video 
>camera in the polling places?

Because that would be - using current technology - obvious.  It may be,
though, that in the future such technology would be much easier to hide.
Think about the currently popular camera cell phones.

>
>Or better yet, if I'm buying votes, why not just ask someone to video 
>casting their own ballot?

Because they can get paid and then get a new ballot.

>
>I would argue that whether or not the mark exists on the ballot 
>beforehand is moot. If people want to buy votes now, they can. Since 
>vote buying can be accomplished either way, I think that it is more 
>important to look at other issues. Like this one, if I WANT to keep my 
>ballot a secret I should be able to do that. So, does having this mark 
>on my ballot make it possible for someone to link me to me ballot 
>without my consent?

It is difficult.

But consider that even though it is difficult, it may not be impossible.

I don't want to go into gory details, but everyone in your precinct does not
vote the same ballot.  There are

	English and Spanish (and other languages?)
	District level ballots (Fire/School, etc.)
	Party ballots in primaries.

Which makes identifying you without your consent easier.  


I wrote the above last night.  I gave the problem a little more thought.
Let me paint a scenario that you may or may not consider far-fetched.

Consider that in mythical Pebbles County that power is about to shift from
the Permanent Revolutionary Party (PRP) to the Socialist Democratic Party
(SDP) because of all the Boulderites moving into Pebbles.

The PRP is panicking because the books have been cooked for thirty years.
There have been huge payoffs, lots of illegal contracts, a minor TABOR
violation, and three parking tickets waived.

The PRP decides to take decisive action.  In the primary they get a few of
the PRP members to memorize names and ballot numbers as the ballots are
removed from "security envelopes".  Or, even more simply, every hour on the
15-minute mark, a corrupt PRP worker looks at the ballot, remembers the
name, and then remembers the unique sequence number.  The worker then goes
to the bathroom or goes out for a smoke and calls PRP headquarters on
his/her cell to give a name and ballot number.

Let's say its 5 PRP members who do this once per hour during the primary.

After the primary, the PRP gathers the names and gets a copy of the scanned
images of all the ballots.

Couple that with the Secretary of States voter registration list and you
have a list of party affiliation.  The PRP then eliminates the names of PRP
members and focuses on registered SDP members.

A few anonymous phone calls are made and a few letters are sent out to the
press and they say something like, "Mr. Bernstein, this is SDP party
headquarters and we know how you voted in the primary.  You voted for Mr. X,
Ms. Y, and Ms. Z.  We thank you for voting and want you to know that we'll
know how you vote in the general election.  Click."

A few dozen calls like that and you will likely affect the results of the
election.  Some (many?) of the registered SDP members in Gamma County will
feel intimidated.


Nicholas, the point to all of this is that government now spends 1/3 of the
money generated by this economy.  A "small" realignment of contracts can
make some enormous individual fortunes.  This provides enormous incentive to
rig elections and _anything_ that makes elections easier to rig should be
avoided.

Someone, somewhere, more clever than I will find a way to use those
government-issued identifying marks to rig elections.


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>Ralph Shnelvar wrote:
>
>>A 100 gigabyte drive can be purchased for about $100 and easily fits in a
>>coat pocket.
>>
>>A relatively simple computer program could scan those 100,000 JPEG images in
>>a few hours for the identifying marks.
>>
>>Now it becomes trivial for people to sell their votes and easy for an
>>unscrupulous vote buyer to determine if what the buyer paid for was actually
>>delivered.  All it takes is an unethical worker at the County CLerk's office
>>to make an extra copy of the scanned images and then tuck the extra disk
>>drive in the worker's pocket for sale to a vote buyer.
>>
>>Very, very scary.
>>
>>  
>>
>>>Nick
>>>    
>>>


Ralph