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Re: SB08-040 Online election registration, scheduled at Sen St...Affairs Comm Wed at 1:30PM

Title: Re: SB08-040 Online election registration, scheduled at Se
At 12:49 PM -0700 2/25/08, Margit Johansson wrote:
Hi All,
    SB08-040 (Gordon; no House sponsor) proposing online election registration is scheduled for the Senate State...Affairs Committee this Wed, Feb.27 at 1:30PM.
     It was scheduled weeks earlier, but was postponed.  Back then, Chuck Corry couldn't attend the committee meeting, so I
wrote something up incorporating his written comments, for testimony.  Since the bill was never considered, I sent my notes to
David Archer, Senator Gordon's aide.  Chuck said online registration lists could be subject to malfunction and fraud.  Thus I don't see how we can support the bill.  The convenience argument doesn't work if the practice makes one's registration insecure.
    Chuck, will you be able to make the committee this time?  I hope so.
I also checked with national computer security people to get their take on this.  It didn't seem like they had a position paper on online registration, as they do for online voting (including online return of voted ballots), but I was advised that at the very least, before online registration be instituted, security studies by legitimate experts should be done.  I have not seen any information which would lead us to support this bill.  We know that registration lists are proving undependable technically, (Denver County in 2006, and other jurisdictions across the country since then) and that registration lists have been deliberately tampered with to subvert elections (Greg Palast on FL in 2000); thus we can no longer dismiss the topic of electronic registration lists as being of less importance than the voting process itself. Online registration is surely at least as problematic as offline electronic registration lists, and possibly more so.
     I hope people will be able to attend the hearing.  Comments?
Margit
 
Margit Johansson
 

Margit,
      Sorry, but once again I'll be at Fitzsimmons on Wednesday as my wife is on a three week cycle for her chemotherapy.
     My same arguments against this bill still apply. Why is it that Gordon and others think they can legislate technology that has not been tested and is known to be insecure? Passing a law doesn't create a secure method. And claims that violators will be prosecuted are a joke. How likely is it that someone in another state or country will be prosecuted under Colorado election law?
      At least 25% of names in any voter registration database are ineligible to vote, mainly because they have moved, but also because they are in prison, deceased, or simply don't exist.
     We have also found about 1-2% of the addresses given don't exist or are not residential addresses. those can be typos or other data entry mistakes but in some cases it appears to be deliberate. Nonetheless, an entry without a valid residential address is ineligible to vote in Colorado. In El Paso County the election officials are comparing voter registration roles with the county assessors database to try and reduce this problem. However, I think that effort is unique to this county.
      Anyone who thinks hackers won't go after an online voter registration is living in dreamland. Lets remember this is a presidential election year and the objective is to win the election. And the first step in any election fraud is to have identities, real or otherwise, on the voter registration roles.
       We don't trust elections now and more untested and untrustworthy boondoggles aren't going to help build confidence.
      I would remind Gordon that it is as likely, or more likely that Republicans, the Chinese or other foreign power, will use online voter registration rather than Democrats. Certainly Republicans have been noted for their dirty election tricks in the past decade, e.g., "vote caging."
     Why does Gordon want to expand their opportunities for fraud or disputed elections with a method that is unlikely to help Democrats register (legally) to vote?
               Chuck Corry
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