Concerning the NIST reports we highlighted Wednesday night…the Washington Post catches up today with a front page article on them which begins this way…
The assessment by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, one of the government’s premier research centers, is the most sweeping condemnation of such voting systems by a federal agency.
Decent coverage, though they — like some of the other folks who’ve looked into the draft NIST whitepaper recommendations (two of them: here and here, both PDF) — seem to be overlooking NIST’s other recommendation that even DRE/touch-screen systems with so-called paper trails should not be used either.
For those who wonder why, Wall Street Journal (yes, Wall Street Journal!) explained just one of the reasons why in an article yesterday covering the mess in Florida’s 13th district U.S. House race where some 18,000 votes disappeared on Sarasota County’s paperless ES&S touch-screen voting machines:
I hope to have more analysis and clarification for you, hopefully, later on NIST’s overlooked recommendation to not use DRE/touch-screens even with the so-called Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) paper rolls.
In the meantime though, there’s this little item from the WaPo article for those who don’t click through to the full story…but need to be reminded anyway:
Are we all finally clear on at least that much by now?
Better late than never.
Next up, some legislators need to write it into law.
Ahem, excuse me, but HOW ABOUT SOME FUCKING ACTION.
Talk Talk Talk all day long, that’s all I fucking hear is talk, Fuck the talk, it’s time to fix this fucking problem NATIONALLY NOW.
It’s a NATIONAL SECURITY PROBLEM.
USE YOUR “JUST DO IT” CARD. Be a fucking leader.
Just REMOVE ELECTRONICS from the ELECTIONS.
My god. CRAP.
I think Brad’s gonna be shit out of luck in his quest to find that NIST document that says that DRE-VVPAT is no good either… but at least I can stop wondering how Brad could make such a mistake… and my apologies to internetnews.com.
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1092
Ed Felten Says:
December 2nd, 2006 at 7:32 am
Ned,
NIST has modified the report, and started saying it is only a discussion draft “” though even the modified report says “NIST recommends”¦” in at least one place. It looks like NIST has changed its story here, which is interesting.
Looks like NIST wimped out after all…
*sigh*
It should shock the hell out of the electronic voting machine (EVM) community to know that this was covered two decades ago by the New York Times.
It was mentioned in a 1988 official report:
(NIST Report 1988, bold added).
If comment #3 is accurate, NIST is less willing to do its job than it was two decades ago.
Perhaps the New York Times is too.
Or perhaps after years of yada yada yada and not enough backing, they gave up.
Perhaps we have a better opportunity now, (with a new congress from the party that suffered most from these machines, and Debra Bowen as SOS in California), than we have had for awhile.
GOOD FIND, Dredd!
I think it’s going to take a major citizen uprising to motivate one or both of our illustrious political parties to do something about this. They both enjoy the “benefits” of cheating.
ABC Web News addresses the issue, electronic vote counting laptop computer machines can not be made secure/dependable/reliable to tabulate our votes,..
Link to article