[IP] Gamblers are much safer than voters
Begin forwarded message:
From: Joseph Lorenzo Hall <jhall@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: June 13, 2004 4:06:33 PM EDT
To: Dave Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>, Declan McCullagh <declan@xxxxxxxx>
Subject: Gamblers are much safer than voters
Reply-To: joehall@xxxxxxxxx
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/13/opinion/13SUN1.html
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NYT Editorial: June 13, 2004
MAKING VOTES COUNT
Gambling on Voting
If election officials want to convince voters that electronic voting
can be trusted, they should be willing to make it at least as secure
as slot machines. To appreciate how poor the oversight on voting
systems is, it's useful to look at the way Nevada systematically
ensures that electronic gambling machines in Las Vegas operate
honestly and accurately. Electronic voting, by comparison, is rife
with lax procedures, security risks and conflicts of interest.
On a trip last week to the Nevada Gaming Control Board laboratory, in
a state office building off the Las Vegas Strip, we found testing and
enforcement mechanisms that go far beyond what is required for
electronic voting. Among the ways gamblers are more protected than
voters:
1. The state has access to all gambling software. The Gaming Control
Board has copies on file of every piece of gambling device software
currently being used, and an archive going back years. It is illegal
for casinos to use software not on file. Electronic voting machine
makers, by contrast, say their software is a trade secret, and have
resisted sharing it with the states that buy their machines.
2. The software on gambling machines is constantly being spot-checked.
Board inspectors show up unannounced at casinos with devices that let
them compare the computer chip in a slot machine to the one on file.
If there is a discrepancy, the machine is shut down, and investigated.
This sort of spot-checking is not required for electronic voting. A
surreptitious software change on a voting machine would be far less
likely to be detected.
3. There are meticulous, constantly updated standards for gambling
machines. When we arrived at the Gaming Control Board lab, a man was
firing a stun gun at a slot machine. The machine must work when
subjected to a 20,000-volt shock, one of an array of rules intended to
cover anything that can possibly go wrong. Nevada adopted new
standards in May 2003, but to keep pace with fast-changing technology,
it is adding new ones this month.
Voting machine standards are out of date and inadequate. Machines are
still tested with standards from 2002 that have gaping security holes.
Nevertheless, election officials have rushed to spend hundreds of
millions of dollars to buy them.
4. Manufacturers are intensively scrutinized before they are licensed
to sell gambling software or hardware. A company that wants to make
slot machines must submit to a background check of six months or more,
similar to the kind done on casino operators. It must register its
employees with the Gaming Control Board, which investigates their
backgrounds and criminal records.
When it comes to voting machine manufacturers, all a company needs to
do to enter the field is persuade an election official to buy its
equipment. There is no way for voters to know that the software on
their machines was not written by programmers with fraud convictions,
or close ties to political parties or candidates.
5. The lab that certifies gambling equipment has an arms-length
relationship with the manufacturers it polices, and is open to
inquiries from the public. The Nevada Gaming Control Board lab is a
state agency, whose employees are paid by the taxpayers. The fees the
lab takes in go to the state's general fund. It invites members of the
public who have questions about its work to call or e-mail.
The federal labs that certify voting equipment are profit-making
companies. They are chosen and paid by voting machine companies, a
glaring conflict of interest. The voters and their elected
representatives have no way of knowing how the testing is done, or
that the manufacturers are not applying undue pressure to have flawed
equipment approved. Wyle Laboratories, one of the largest testers of
voting machines, does not answer questions about its voting machine
work.
6. When there is a dispute about a machine, a gambler has a right to
an immediate investigation. When a gambler believes a slot machine has
cheated him, the casino is required to contact the Gaming Control
Board, which has investigators on call around the clock. Investigators
can open up machines to inspect their internal workings, and their
records of recent gambling outcomes. If voters believe a voting
machine has manipulated their votes, in most cases their only recourse
is to call a board of elections number, which may well be busy, to
lodge a complaint that may or may not be investigated.
Election officials say their electronic voting systems are the very
best. But the truth is, gamblers are getting the best technology, and
voters are being given systems that are cheap and untrustworthy by
comparison. There are many questions yet to be resolved about
electronic voting, but one thing is clear: a vote for president should
be at least as secure as a 25-cent bet in Las Vegas.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving the included information for research and
educational purposes.)
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Joseph Lorenzo Hall, SIMS PhD Student; UC Berkeley.
[web:<http://pobox.com/~joehall/>, blog:<http://pobox.com/~joehall/nqb>]
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