OT: wanted, election night volunteer observers

[robgoelz at gmail.com]

Jim,

  I'm playing Euchre with a few friends and talking politics, so your email couldn't have come at a better time. 

  I can't volunteer because I'm at work and class all day, though I should have an hour at lunch to drive around- I'm in the East Valley @ the 101 and Elliot.

  My friend Chris would like to volunteer. He's at Baseline and McClintock and he's definitely tech-savvy. Please send information to him at chris.cathorne at gmail dot com.

  You can reach me here if I can be of any assistance.

  Thanks!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

-----Original Message-----
From: "Jim March" <1.jim.march at gmail.com>

Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2008 22:37:05 
To: <plug-discuss at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us>
Subject: OT: wanted, election night volunteer observers


Folks,

I'm part of a mixed crew monitoring the elections here in Maricopa
County.  We're looking for volunteers for LATE on election day and
into the night (in some cases) to monitor critical areas in the
election process that aren't being tracked.

About me: I was a guest speaker at the recent conference covering the
development of open-source voting systems.  I run Ubuntu Intrepid
personally (with a VirtualBox XP purely so I can take apart election
databases) and I'm a member of TFUG (Tucson Free Users Group).  I'm
also a member of the board of directors at BlackBoxVoting.org - the
group that was behind the HBO documentary "Hacking Democracy".

What we need are two different types of volunteers, all registered AZ voters:

1) Those willing to work later into the night (starting at 7:00pm,
going maybe to 11:00pm or later?) monitoring the 22 "regional
receiving stations" where ballots come in from the field for modem
uploads to the central tabulator.  A recent Princeton study of a
similar-tech-era Sequoia product in New Jersey says the memory
cartridges ("electronic ballot boxes") can be hacked as there's zero
crypto on the pack.  Worse, the boxes and bags in which the ballot
materials are shipped are absolutely pathetic in terms of physical
access security.  If possible, these people should have camcorders.

2) Those able to pull only a shorter shift can visit a polling place
as it closes and photograph the end-of-day vote tallies as they come
out of the precinct voting machines...before those votes can be hacked
either in-route via memory card manipulation or at the central
tabulator's MS-SQL database.  These people need a decent (4 megapixel
or better) still-image camera, to be used ONLY after all the voters
are done (important!).

We need as many people as we can get to a max of about 80, and the
more tech-literate the better.

Volunteers will get credentials from the Libertarian Party :) - the
people involved are a mix of Dems and LP, with at least partial (well,
a little bit grudging...) cooperation going on with the Dem party.

IF some are available during the day, we could use a small crew going
around checking for abnormally long lines in precincts with high
college/minority demographics.  Let me know if you can help with that.

If interested please respond off-list with your name, phone #, Email
addy and approximate location (so we can send you close).

About me: a previous tech exam of the Maricopa voting system I was
involved in is online at:

http://www.bbvdocs.org/sequoia/Maricopa-County-Elections-Report.pdf

Google my name ("Jim March") with any of the voting system vendors
(esp. "Diebold") and you'll get scads of hits.  This is very much "for
real".

Fun fact: the top voting software vendor isn't Diebold, Sequoia or the
like: it's Microsoft.  Windows is at the core of most of the systems,
and their database stuff (often *Access* for God's sake) is inside
most.  Efforts to open the source code as a reform measure have run
head-on into MS lobbying money; MS doesn't want to see a high-profile,
high-security app like voting migrate to FOSS.

Thanks to any who can help,

Jim March
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