FW: [ISN] My experience as an Election Judge in Baltimore County by Avi Rubin

[Howell, Paul]

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From: owner-isn@attrition.org [mailto:owner-isn@attrition.org] On Behalf Of
InfoSec News
Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2004 6:09 AM
To: isn@attrition.org
Subject: [ISN] My experience as an Election Judge in Baltimore County by Avi
Rubin


http://www.avirubin.com/judge.html

It is now 10:30 pm, and I have been up since 5 a.m. this morning.  
Today, I served as an election judge in the primary election, and I am
writing down my experience now, despite being extremely tired, as everything
is fresh in my mind, and this was one of the most incredible days in my
life.

I first became embroiled in the current national debate on evoting security
when Dan Wallach of Rice University and I, along with Computer Scientist
Yoshi Kohno and my Ph.D. student Adam Stubblefield released a report
analyzing the software in Diebold's Accuvote voting machines.

Although there were four of us on the project, perhaps because I was the
most senior of the group, the report became widely associate with me, and
people began referring to it as the "Hopkins report" or even in some cases
the "Rubin report". I became the target of much criticism from Maryland and
Georgia election officials who were deeply committed to these machines, and
of course, of the vendor. The biggest criticism that I received was that I
am an academic scientist and that academics do not "know siccum" about
elections, as Doug Lewis from the Election Center put very eloquently.

While I dispute many of the claims that computer scientists working on
e-voting security analysis are deficient in their knowledge of elections, I
realized that there was only one way to stifle this criticism, and at the
same time to perform a civic duty. I volunteered to become an election judge
in Baltimore County. The first step was to get signed up. I filled out a
form at a local grocery store and waited for a call from the Baltimore
County Board of Elections. The call never came. So, I called up the board
and spoke with the head of elections and found out that there was a
mandatory training session a couple of days later. I got on to the list for
the training, and I attended. There, I learned that my entire county would
be voting with Diebold Accuvote TS machines, the very one that we had
analyzed in our report. It was an eery feeling as I trained for 2 hours on
every aspect of using the machine and teaching others how to use them.  
Afterwards, I received a certificate signed by the board of elections and
became a qualified judge. I was supposed to receive a phone call within a
few days assigning me to a precinct, but I did not. So, I called up the
board of elections and spoke with the same woman, who assigned me to a
precinct at a church in Timonium, MD, about 15 minutes from my house.

I reported to my precinct at 5:45 a.m. this morning. Introductions began,
and I immediately realized that it would not be a normal day.  
There are two head judges, one from each party. There were also seven other
judges. The head judges were Marie (R) and Jim (D). Both of them mentioned
that they read about me in the paper that morning, and were pretty cold
towards me. It turns out that the Baltimore Sun ran a story today about my
being an election judge. In there, I'm quoted as saying that the other
judges in my training were in the "grandparent category" with respect to
their age. My colleagues for the day, who were in that category as well, did
not appreciate the barb and were ready to spar with me.

[...]



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