LIBERADIO(!)

It’s been nine days since this proofer asked Secretary of State Tre Hargett and State Election Coordinator Mark Goins to present proof to the voters of Tennessee that even one vote cast during any election using the 100% unverifiable electronic voting machines we use now in 93 out of 95 counties in Tennessee has ever been recorded accurately, as per the voters’ intent.

On day three, I heard back from Mr. Goins who suggested, as if he wasn’t the person responsible for our elections, that I go elsewhere for an answer.

My response to the day three brush off was to simplify my request and make another appeal for proof:

“And while I do believe your explanation of the bi-partisan pre-purchase testing procedure and the invitation to contact the election administrators to see demonstrations of each machine might address my request to see the process in which the votes are cast, it does not address my request to see the process in which the votes are cast and counted accurately.

In other words, I would like verification that the software used on these machines is both recording and counting accurately.

Do you have any suggestions on how this may be accomplished?”

Mr. Goins responded by once again by shirking his responsibility as the dude running our elections and, however inadvertently, proving my point – he can’t offer proof:

“Once again I want to thank you for your interest in the election process. I also want to apologize if my previous e-mail was unclear. The purpose of testing the voting machines prior to each election is to verify not only that ballots were cast, but also that they were properly tabulated and recorded. This testing process has been used in numerous elections prior to the start of my tenure with the Division of Elections and I’m unaware of any serious concerns expressed by the participating candidates or the parties they represented. However, if you have specific questions about the voting machine hardware or software, it might be advisable to contact officials with the companies that supply the equipment. I would be happy to supply some contact information for those companies, if you are interested.”

I’m not sure what part of my request for proof of voting accuracy “during any election” he doesn’t get. Well, yeah, I am sure. All of it.

And perhaps as the gentlemen in charge of building trust in our elections, Mr. Goins should already have satisfactory answers from the touch-screen electronic voting machines manufacturers to the questions many Tennesseans are asking about their insecure and unverifiable voting equipment.

So I will write to Mr. Goins once again for clarification.

I will ask him if he is suggesting that the testing done on the touch-screen machines prior to an election guarantees that every vote cast on election day on said machines will be counted and counted as cast?

And if so, I will ask, how can he be sure?

Do the companies that make the machines provide access to the counting software so that it can be verified and studied by the his office? Can the companies that make the machines guarantee that the counting software is free of bugs, i.e. perfect and never makes mistakes? Can the companies that make the machines guarantee that the vote count cannot be manipulated in the source code or by introducing a virus in one of the unsecure data ports? Can the companies that make the machines guarantee that if one of the machines crashed or malfunctions, as computers are prone to do, that the votes will not be irretrievably lost?

While Mr. Goins is waiting for his answers, he can brush up on these reports by a computer scientist, a research center, and a non-partisan public policy and law institute that have pretty much everyone else in the country rightfully convinced that the machines Tennesseans use in 93 out of 95 counties will not give us a secure and verifiable election in November of 2010.

• The National Institute of Standards and Technology, condemned them because they they are not secure, don’t “allow election officials to recount ballots independently from a voting machine’s software,” and “a single programmer could ‘rig’ a major election.”
• Computer Science professor Hovav Shacham who studied a machine – not even the source code! – and said on Science Friday last week that he found it to be vulnerable to attack and manipulation
• The Brennan Center for Justice released two comprehensive studies of electronic voting systems in the United States, The Machinery of Democracy: Protecting Elections in an Electronic World and The Machinery of Democracy: Voting System Security, Accessibility, Usability, and Cost.