This distressing news was flagged for us by Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org late Friday…
And how do we know SCYTL’s electronic (Internet!) “voting technologies” are “secure”? Well, they tell us so themselves — twice — in their press release, silly!
They couldn’t just say it was “secure” if it wasn’t! Right?!
In any case, here’s a bit of the red flag Harris waved on Friday to help unpack what all of this actually means for the future of what’s left of our small-d “democratic” elections…
When you view your local or state election results on the Internet, on portals which often appear to be owned by the county elections division, in over 525 US jurisdictions you are actually redirected to a private corporate site controlled by SOE Software, which operates under the name ClarityElections.com.
The good news is that this firm promptly reports precinct-level detail in downloadable spreadsheet format. As reported by BlackBoxVoting.org in 2008, the bad news is that this centralizes one middleman access point for over 525 jurisdictions in AL, AZ, CA, CO, DC, FL, KY, MI, KS, IL, IN, NC, NM, MN, NY, SC, TX, UT, WA. And growing.
As local election results funnel through SOE’s servers (typically before they reach the public elsewhere), those who run the computer servers for SOE essentially get “first look” at results and the ability to immediately and privately examine vote details throughout the USA.
In 2004, many Americans were justifiably concerned when, days before the presidential election, Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell redirected Ohio election night results through the Tennessee-based server for several national Republican Party operations.
This is worse: This redirects results reporting to a centralized privately held server which is not just for Ohio, but national; not just USA-based, but global.
Harris goes on to point out that citizen photographs of poll tapes printed out by voting and tabulating machines at the precinct, just after the close of polls, are very helpful in the attempt to mitigate “man-in-the-middle” manipulation of results which can occur between the time precinct results are actually produced and the time a government jurisdiction or private company finally posts those results to the web on Election Night.
However, she notes, when that same private company posting results is also the same private company running the election itself, via Internet Voting — where there are no such poll tapes to even be seen by anyone on Election Night, much less photographed as one form of independent check and balance — what little protection there might have been to help deter that form of manipulation is all but gone.
Couldn’t we all save a whole lot of time, money and resources by just letting one huge, private corporation tell us who our “elected” officials will be? By the time all this privatization of our previously-public elections is all said and done, that’s pretty much all that we’ll have left anyway.
Democracy? Voting? Citizen oversight? Self-governance? Who really needs it?
“Innovating Democracy”
Uh…no, thanks.
“… secure electronic voting … ”
Sometimes it is difficult to tell which myth addiction is the greatest anymore.
I am not one to jump on the messenger just because the message is bad … so thanks Bev Blog and Brad Blog.
Brad,
Ever feel like Cassandra?
What else can we do but keep shouting it out.
Lora @ 3:
Yes.
I ask myself that every day. 🙁
the middle man software has been a big concern of mine since i read bev”s first series on them and to have an international company take them over is going from frying pan to the fire…but i have another question on my mind today…i keep hearing at bain they would buy companies and then get insurance on the pensions,take the pension money and then the tax payer funded pension ins was on the hook for the costs….HOW IS THAT NOT FRAUD?…they did it ovr and ovr so it was obviously part of a business plan…if someone could explain this to me i would be gratful
For what it’s worth, I keep bringing the subject of our dysfunctional voting system up in public. Of course, the typical response is no response, but whadaya gonna do.
As Ray Hunt said concerning the prevailing dysfunctional myths about how to train horses–“And it’s not gonna change, but I’m gonna work at it.”
The Occupy Movement has dramatically changed the national conversation. Issues that were taboo yesterday are now brought up by so-called conservative Republicans. This gives me hope that OUR taboo subject may one day be a part of our larger group consciousness and the country will become motivated to reclaim the fundamental right of voting.
Until them our little individual efforts remain heroic in my eyes.
much love,
Dave