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Brave New Ballot - The Battle to Safeguard Democracy in the Age of Electronic Voting

Brave New Ballot - The Battle to Safeguard Democracy in the Age of Electronic Voting
“Avi Rubin performs a true patriotic duty with this book. He shows that without voter-verified records, votes can be lost, election outcomes can come into doubt, and public cynicism in the political process surely grows. Brave New Ballot is an interesting story of a talented computer scientist who found himself in an adventure because of his dogged effort to make America's voting technology consistent with her democracy.”
Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ)

Imagine for a moment that you live in a country where nobody is sure how most of the votes are counted, and there’s no reliable record for performing a recount. Imagine that machines count the votes, but nobody knows how they work. Now imagine if somebody found out that the machines were vulnerable to attack, but the agencies that operate them won’t take the steps to make them safe. If you live in America, you don’t need to imagine anything. This is the reality of electronic voting in our country.

Avi Rubin is a computer scientist at Johns Hopkins University and a specialist in systems security. He and a team of researchers studied the code that operates the machines now used in 37 states and discovered the following terrifying facts:

• The companies hired to test the election equipment for federal certification did not study the code that operates the machines and the election commissions employed no computer security analysts.

• All votes are recorded on a single removable card similar to the one in a digital camera. There is no way to determine if the card or the code that operates the machine has been tampered with.

• It’s very easy to program a machine to change votes. There’s no way to determine if that has happened.

• There were enough irregularities with the electronic voting machines used throughout the 2004 election to make anyone think twice about using them again.

Avi Rubin has testified at Congressional hearings trying to alert the government that it has put our democracy at risk by relying so heavily on voting machines without taking the proper precautions. As he has waged this battle, he has been attacked, undermined, and defamed by a prominent manufacturer. His job has been threatened, but he won’t give up until every citizen understands that at this moment, our democracy hangs in the balance.

There are simple solutions and, before you vote in the next election, Rubin wants you to know your rights. If you don’t know them and you use an electronic voting machine, you may not be voting at all.

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From Publishers Weekly:
"Rubin, professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins, tells the fascinating story of how he set off a media storm in the summer of 2003 when he and two graduate students revealed that the Diebold electronic voting technology in use in 37 states was riddled with errors and problems. A self-described "computer-geek," Rubin was publicly accused of undermining democracy by officials he describes as desperate to save face after investing state money in the machines. He also became the object of an e-voting industry campaign to smear his work, especially after it was revealed that he had connections to a voting software company. Refreshingly, he describes this potential conflict of interest with considerable candor. Rubin's account of his mounting frustration as governmental and industrial spin doctors continued to champion electronic voting in the face of its manifold problems, and turned electronic voting into a partisan issue, is a sympathetic one. Despite the inability of his critics to understand it, his explanation of the technological issues at the heart of electronic voting is clear, and his argument that votes need to be verifiable in order for the democratic process to be meaningful is so reasonable that it sounds almost revolutionary."
Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.
36%
Details
Author Aviel D. Rubin
Type Hardcover
Year 2006
Pages 300
Illustrated no
Market price: $24.95
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