Alice in Internet Voting Wonderland - no hanging chads? Also no audits, no recounts

No chads? And no audits no recounts. Finland learned the hard way in 2008 when internet votes were lost and a court overturned that election. Must we learn everything the hard way? A press release for internet voting vendor Scytl is being presented as an op-ed piece by Sheila Shayon. Her piece ran in HuffPo (no comments allowed) and in several other blogs on the "net". Shayon says with internet voting, there won't be any of those nasty old hanging chads. No paper, no proof, no truth.

See Sheila Shayon's utopian vision of internet voting, which closely resembles a Scytl press release:

Sheila Shayon: Digital Democracy: Scytl, MySociety Secure Funding We may never again have to suffer “pregnant chads,” “swinging chads” and other questionable voting protocols in an election thanks to the likes of Scytl, which calls itself a “worldwide leader in the enhancement of secure solutions for electoral modernization.”

Note to Sheila - most jurisidictions have long banned punch card voting machines, the only voting machine that creates "chads" on ballots.

To readers: Its a darn shame that many people may be willing to turn their votes over to the owners of a private corporation, while also making the election hackable by any computer criminal in the world.

There’ll be no hanging chads. In fact, with internet voting, there’ll be nothing to truly validate the election. There’s nothing tangible to audit to detect fraud or error.

If votes are lost, there’s nothing to recount. They learned that in Finland when Scytl helped them administer an Internet Voting Pilot for several municipalities in 2008. The results of that election were later overturned and a do over was run using paper ballots.

Finnish E-Voting Results Annulled By The Supreme Administrative Court
22 April, 2009 http://www.edri.org/edri-gram/number7.8/evoting-annuled-finland
2% of results gone. Scytl was part of the pilots.

Finnish EVoting CoE Evaluation
http://www.effi.org/system/files?file=FinnishEVotingCoEComparison_Effi_20080801.pdf

Scytl website
http://www.scytl.com/categoria_ing_10.htm

When Honolulu Hawaii had an internet voting experiment, transpire dropped by 83%!

See “Low Turnout In Hawaii’s Internet Election”
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2009/05/low_turnout_in_hawaiis_interne.html

What is driving the push for internet voting? Filthy lucre perhaps? Maybe the press releases claiming that Internet Voting is a $1.5 Billion industry? All that money couldn't corrupt anyone, could it? Oh, thats right, voting vendors have bribed and corrupted top election officials before. Computer technologists say internet voting is inherently insecure. See Verified Voting's informative blog posts on issues with internet voting.

If you want to be more informed on voting issues, visit Dr. Charles Correy's online book, Vote Fraud and Election Issues. Its hard hitting and you'll catch on quickly to the vulnerabilities and threats to our election systems.

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