[Voterescue] [EDA Data Analysis] 1-20-08 Holt's emergency bill to assure secure elections is a FRAUD.

Mon Jan 21 11:36:58 CST 2008

I couldn't agree more, Kathleen!

I hope no one thinks that because I have designed audit methods for 
elections, I approve of electronic voting. I DO NOT!

Jerry

At 11:17 AM 1/21/2008, Kathleen Wynne wrote:
>I agree with Einstein:
>
>"Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It 
>takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the 
>opposite direction." - Albert Einstein
>
>We often confuse easy for simple.  Simple for incomplete.  I believe 
>just the opposite is true.  True sophistication comes when you 
>deilver "all" of the features, all of the meaning, in an easy 
>package.  By simplicity, I mean not making things unnecessarily complicated.
>
>This is never more relevant nor true than how this reality relates 
>to our elections.  Making it easy is hard.  But, It's the only way 
>to ensure that the only experts in our elections will be the 
>citizens themselves.
>
>I have no background in computer expertise, but I do have a 
>considerable amount of expertise as a result of my work with Bev 
>Harris conducting in the field investigations, which proved that 
>these voting systems have no place in counting our votes.  They are 
>an abomination of what elections are meant to represent.  Elections 
>will never belong to the people, as long as we allow machines to 
>count our votes.
>
>Kathleen Wynne
>
>
>
>
>Jerry Lobdill <lobdillj at charter.net> wrote:
>My guess is that Mr. Azadpour is rather a newcomer to the discussion
>of problems that the voting machines and electronic vote
>scanner/counters have brought into our elections. Otherwise, I don't
>see how he could be asking the questions he does. He certainly does
>bring up a valid point that every procedure in the process deserves
>to be reviewed for security problems that may exist. But to suggest
>that electronic voting/counting does not bring new and more ominous
>problems than any others that have existed in the past and which may
>yet exist is very naive.
>
>Just to qualify myself a little more specifically for those like Mr.
>Azadpour who are doubting the importance of what has been said in
>this thread, I am a retired scientist/engineer whose career was spent
>in research and development of computerized systems and in modeling
>the performance of systems that extract signals from noise, i.e.,
>modeling of stochastic processes and the systems that attempt to
>extract meaning from such data. I am 70 years old and have been
>working in the field of voting system audit design for the last two
>years. Some of my work is available on the NIST website as mentioned
>in my initial post on this subject.
>
>Jerry Lobdill
>
>**********************************
>
>At 09:28 PM 1/20/2008, M. Aram Azadpour wrote:
>
>
> >Please, let us not go into the deep end here.
> >
> >How do you know you are reading this Email; or, how do you know that
> >a person (not a program) wrote it; or, how do I know that when I hit the
> >send-button, the text of the Email sent is the same as the one I wrote?
> >Please, let us not go into the deep end here.
> >
> >There is a difference between making the voting "process" (and it is a
> >process, meaning it is not a one-step thing; which it starts from the time
> >a voter enter his/her vote; until it is counted for a candidate 
> and everything
> >in between; for example, how do you know that the truck carrying 
> paper-ballots
> >would not fall off a bridge and all paper ballots be lost; or, how 
> do we know
> >that the truck carrying paper-ballot is not highjacked and another truck w/
> >forged ballots is not sent in its place; BTW, if you were of the voting age
> >during JFK or LBJ's time (or if your parents were), did you-all (or
> >your parents)
> >raised the same concerns about voting irregularities of that time
> >(which happened
> >to work in favor of JFK and LBJ)?)... now, there is a difference
> >between making
> >the voting "process" more secure and tamper-proofed than being against/for
> >a particular voting-machine. At the end of the day, if "we," the
> >voting public,
> >are not aware of an irregularity how do we know that voting 
> process was clean?
> >Were the American people as concerned of voting-machines in, say, 
> 1998, 1996,
> >1994, 1992, 1990, etc. as they are today? What happened in 2000 which caused
> >us to become so concerned of voting machines and vote counting-process?
> >
> >Pls consider making the voting-process (from registering a voter, to polling
> >places which are free of intimidation, to election-judges free of biases,
> >to whatever else) more secured and reliable than just thinking 
> that if voting
> >machines were changed then all is going to be well and good. --Aram
> >(Grapevine, TX).
> >
> >
> >----- Original Message ----- From: "Jerry Lobdill"
> >To: "Brent Turner" ;
> >; "'EI Legislation List'"
> >; "'Analysis EDA'"
> >
> >Cc: "'Art Brender'"
> >Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2008 5:33 PM
> >Subject: Re: [Voterescue] [EDA Data Analysis] 1-20-08 Holt's
> >emergency bill to assure secure elections is a FRAUD.
> >
> >
> >>Oh yeah! And how would we know that the compiled code was a faithful
> >>version of the disclosed open source even if there was such?
> >>
> >>Jerry
> >>
> >>At 12:33 PM 1/20/2008, Brent Turner wrote:
> >>>Not to mention no open source / disclosure language, as 
> Microsoft made sure-
> >>>BT
> >>>
> >>>-----Original Message-----
> >>>From: analysis-bounces at electiondefensealliance.org
> >>>[mailto:analysis-bounces at electiondefensealliance.org] On Behalf Of Jerry
> >>>Lobdill
> >>>Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2008 6:48 AM
> >>>To: voterescue at voterescue.org; EI Legislation List; 'Analysis EDA'
> >>>Cc: Art Brender
> >>>Subject: [EDA Data Analysis] 1-20-08 Holt's emergency bill to 
> assure secure
> >>>elections is a FRAUD.
> >>>
> >>>Holt's emergency bill,
> >>>
> >>>H.R.5036
> >>>
> >>>Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act of 2008 
> (Introduced in House)
> >>>is totally inadequate to assure the integrity of an election. This bill is
> >>>WORTHLESS. Here is the relevant language in the bill:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c110:1:./temp/~c1103UiRUC:e2303
> >>> :
> >>>
> >>> (c) Number of Ballots Counted Under Audit-
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> (1) IN GENERAL- The hand counts of the
> >>> paper ballots
> >>>administered by the Election Auditor of a State, county, or equivalent
> >>>location under this section with respect to an election shall occur in at
> >>>least 3 percent of all precincts or equivalent locations (or alternative
> >>>audit units used in accordance with the method provided for 
> under paragraph
> >>>(2)) in which ballots were cast in the election.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> (2) USE OF ALTERNATIVE SAMPLING MECHANISM-
> >>>Notwithstanding paragraph (1) (and subject to the completeness requirement
> >>>set forth in subsection (b)(2)), a State, county, or equivalent 
> location may
> >>>adopt and apply an alternative sampling mechanism to determine 
> the number of
> >>>paper ballots which will be subject to hand counts in accordance with this
> >>>section with respect to an election, so long as the alternative sampling
> >>>mechanism uses the paper ballots verified by voters or paper ballot
> >>>printouts verifiable by voters at the time the vote is cast to conduct the
> >>>audit and the Director of the National Institute of Standards 
> and Technology
> >>>or a panel of 3 independent statisticians appointed by the 
> Election Auditor
> >>>of the State, county, or equivalent jurisdiction determines that the
> >>>alternative sampling mechanism will be at least as statistically effective
> >>>in ensuring the accuracy of the election results as the sample size
> >>>specified under paragraph (1).
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>Dr. Holt, a physicist, knows precisely what the flaw in this language is.
> >>>The question is, Why is he introducing a bill that he knows will 
> not provide
> >>>a definite and controllable probability of detection of vote fraud? The
> >>>following does not even consider the damning facts that Holt's rescue bill
> >>>permits the use of cash register thermal print "paper trail" 
> records that do
> >>>not bear any resemblance to the display screens a voter sees, 
> and electronic
> >>>ballot scanner/counters, which have demonstrated to be as vulnerable to
> >>>fraud as the paperless voting machines.
> >>>
> >>>Here's an example of what will occur under the provisions of this bill.
> >>>
> >>>Suppose there are 1000 audit units (precincts, election districts,
> >>>whatever). If you choose 3% of these (30) at random for a full 
> hand recount,
> >>>what does that buy you in terms of probability of choosing at least one
> >>>corrupted audit unit? The answer is, "It depends on the announced winning
> >>>margin of votes, the distribution of audit unit size, how many units were
> >>>actually corrupted in producing a fraudulent win, and the sizes 
> of the units
> >>>selected at random for audit."
> >>>
> >>>Just for example, suppose the precincts are all the same size, so that
> >>>completely random selection is a proper strategy for audit. Suppose the
> >>>margin of the winner is stated to be 5% and the corruption is 
> evenly spread
> >>>through 15 of the largest audit units (easily done by reference to county
> >>>election records).
> >>>
> >>>What is the probability that your audit will find one of the corrupted
> >>>precincts? Why, it's about 0.37!
> >>>
> >>>What if the corruption is spread through 25 of the audit units? Then the
> >>>probability of finding one corrupt unit in the audit is 0.66.
> >>>
> >>>So you see, the language of Holt's emergency bill is flawed and, 
> considering
> >>>his background and the work that was done on his previous bills before the
> >>>politicos took over and emasculated them, you'd be a fool to think he is
> >>>unaware of this flaw. Therefore, he is a fraudster with very high
> >>>probability.
> >>>
> >>>You can read more about the details of why this is fraud in the following
> >>>papers (which were available to Dr. Holt in 2006).
> >>>
> >>>Considering Vote Count Distribution in Designing Election Audits Rev.
> >>>2, 11-26-06 , by Jerry Lobdill:
> >>>
> >>>http://vote.nist.gov/Considering-Vote-Count-Distribution-in-Desig 
> ning-Electi
> >>>on-Audits-Rev-2-11-26-06.pdf
> >>>>ion-Audits-Rev-2-11-26-06.pdf>
> >>>
> >>>Election Audit Sampling Design It's Not Just About Sampling Without
> >>>Replacement 10-09-06, by Jerry Lobdill`:
> >>>
> >>>http://vote.nist.gov/Election-Audit-Sampling-Plan-Design-Its-Not- 
> Just-About-
> >>>Sampling-Without-Replacement-10-09-06.pdf
> >>>>-Sampling-Without-Replacement-10-09-06.pdf>
> >>>
> >>>Jerry Lobdill
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>_______________________________________________
> >>Voterescue mailing list
> >>Voterescue at voterescue.org
> >>http://voterescue.org/mailman/listinfo/voterescue_voterescue.org
> >
> >
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Voterescue mailing list
>Voterescue at voterescue.org
>http://voterescue.org/mailman/listinfo/voterescue_voterescue.org
>
>
>
>Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. 
><http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=51733/*http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ>Try 
>it now.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://voterescue.org/pipermail/voterescue_voterescue.org/attachments/20080121/057c2a73/attachment-0001.html 