on internet voting and computer voting

["Paul Tiger - LPBC Publicity" <Publicity@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings fellow voters,

So many people have a great issue with computer security. That may be a well
criticism of computer based systems - however this is not my argument.

Electronic systems fail. Even the electromechanical and opto-sense systems
that we've had in the past have failed. Every failure has required hundreds
of extra hours of labor to resolve. These are often over budget and
unplanned for. Difficult for any county or our state to bear.

My fear from the start of the investigations of using computers system-wide
in elections has been *data destruction*. Elections can be and have been
changed by destroying all the elections data from a precinct or area. This
has occurred with military ballots, as well as domestic electronic ballots.

While hackers may change something more vague and subtle, crackers and
general saboteurs can and will scramble systems and destroy data a lot
quicker and more dramatically. In fact, it might be a good ruse to get close
enough to the systems to plant a ROM change with a virus.
My repeated worst-case-scenario since the passage of HAVA has been: A
fourteen year old with a HERF gun built from common household electrical
parts and mail order, blowing away the memory in all the elections computers
from 50 feet away in a van in the street.
This is not science fiction.

The more technology we use to support elections, the more we open ourselves
up to an incomprehensible number of possibilities for failure. Those
failures are costly in a variety of ways.

The best method available to voters continues to be paper. A printing
calculator might be the most technology needed. And of course, human labor.
It is hard to balance these costs in the face of new laws that force changes
in how the citizens control the republic. I urge you to resist the
temptation to make elections easier and faster. They should be accurate and
every vote should be counted.

Paul Tiger, Publicity Director of the Libertarian Party of Boulder County
Publicity@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
303-774-6383 voice and messages
720-323-0570 cell
www.LPBoulder.org
"The government that governs best, governs least."
                            Thomas Jefferson