Re: How can Neal say Boulder's election was accurate

[Neal McBurnett <neal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I just heard Neal say on KGNU that he thought Boulder's election
> seemed to be accurate.

Sorry if it came across like that, folks.  I didn't have much time to
prepare and I was concentrating on other aspects of the interview.
But I didn't say it quite like that.  I made it clear that the system
is far too vulnerable to fraud or major mistakes.

I just recorded this on the KGNU comment line:

 Listeners may have thought that during an interview with KGNU
 yesterday, that I said the boulder county vote count was accurate.
 In listening to the tape, I see that my quick response wasn't well
 stated - and I'm sorry about that.  I want to emphasize for the
 record that we don't yet know how accurate the results are.  As
 discussed in the rest of the interview, it reamains too easy to
 commit fraud with these systems.  Because of the the lack of
 transparency in the system and lack of a hand audit, we'll never
 really know for sure.  The canvass board has not yet reviewed the
 results, that there are still outstanding questions.  So while I
 didn't observe anything that indicates hard evidence of a major
 miscount, I do think we need major changes to have the sort of
 confidence in our democracy that we deserve.

 On the other hand, we're glad that we got a paper-based system in
 Boulder, so we have more confidence in the results than those
 counties that use touch-screen machines.  We can do a recount of the
 paper if necessary, though unfortunately colorado law makes it hard
 to do a recount by hand.

But besides that I think the interview again highlighted the concerns
that so many citizens have been focussing on.

It turns out that somehow by mistake I was unsubscribed from this
list last Friday, and I now see that there is a lot of other
stuff to catch up with.  Thanks for speaking out, folks!

Neal McBurnett                 http://bcn.boulder.co.us/~neal/
Signed and/or sealed mail encouraged.  GPG/PGP Keyid: 2C9EBA60


On Mon, Nov 08, 2004 at 08:33:14AM -0700, Evan Daniel Ravitz wrote:
> I just heard Neal say on KGNU that he thought Boulder's election
> seemed to be accurate.
> 
> How can you say that, Neal? You nor I nor anyone else but the
> shadowy "certifiers" have ever looked at the software which does the
> counting.
> 
> As Bev Harris said on KGNU this morning, there is NO way of knowing
> what goes on in the "black boxes" which count our votes.
> 
> Again, you techies get so lost in the details of elections, you lose
> track of the big picture.
> 
> As David Dill says, there is NO difference between elections counted
> by secret software and elections counted by had secretly in locked
> rooms by unaccountable people.
> 
> Why did you say that, Neal? Is someone pressuring you to be
> reassuring to the sheep?
> 
> Evan