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Michigan Democrats to use Internet Voting in Upcoming Caucus

Posted on December 30, 2003 by | Comments Off

In Michigan’s upcoming Democratic Caucus on February 7, citizens will have a new way of voting–voting online using the Internet from their home or at public Internet terminals around the state. The Internet voting will be offered in addition to the traditional means of voting via mail or at one of nearly 600 caucus sites in Michigan.

The Michigan Democratic Caucus is part of the process by which the national Democratic Party will choose their nominee for president, eventually narrowing the current field of nine candidates down to one who will be confirmed at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. The Michigan Caucus follows Iowa’s caucus, New Hampshire’s primary, and the so-called “Super Tuesday Primaries” on February 3, but with 153 delegates, Michigan may play an important role in deciding the Democratic candidate.

While there has been a significant amount of criticism leveled at electronic voting in the past few months, especially against Diebold, a maker of electronic voting systems that are known to have significant security problems as well as VoteHere, who’s computer systems were recently broken into and blueprints stolen, Internet voting has not been given much press coverage. In the days after the 2000 election, it was hailed as a way of preventing what happened in Florida, but since that time expectations have been scaled back.

Even with the Democratic National Committee’s vote to approve the use of Internet voting for the Michigan Caucus, questions about security prevent Internet voting from becoming widespread. The Michigan Democratic Party is working to make sure the process will be secure and that people will be prevented from voting more than once. However, in a recent AP article Mark Brewer, executive chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party, was quoted as saying that “We’re not guaranteeing a perfect election…Nobody can do that, every election has it’s flaws.” Little information has been disclosed about security systems to be used during caucus voting, only that people will be mailed the address to a private website and provided with some type of identification number to vote online. The security concerns are not just paranoia, in a recent primary in Canada an online voting system was knocked offline by hackers.

Party officials point to the success of Internet voting in other states as a testament to its feasibility. On March 7, 2000, Arizona held the first legally binding election over the Internet allowing people to use the Internet to vote in the state’s Democratic primary. The primary set a record with the largest turnout since the primary process was setup in 1984, with 39,942 of the 86,907 votes being cast over the Internet. The Alaskan Republican Party also held a non-binding straw poll in January of 2000 using the Internet. Both of these were conducted without any reported problems.

The federal government has also conducted tests on the feasibility of Internet voting. In the 2000 election, the Voting Over the Internet (VOI) Project allowed 84 voters to vote online at a cost of $6.4 million dollars, or $73,809 per vote. While the small sample size and “security issues” make it hard to draw meaningful conclusions from the 2000 VOI Project, the plan has been expanded for 2004 as part of the Help America Vote Act passed in the aftermath of the 2000 election. For the 2004 program, the Department of Defense and the consulting firm Accenture (formerly Andersen Consulting of Enron notoriety) have collaborated on the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE). SERVE is designed to give statistically meaningful results, allowing up to 100,000 offshore military members to vote online.

While a recently announced partnership with the internet security firm VeriSign should help alleviate some of the potential security problems with SERVE, Accenture, the main company working on SERVE has a dubious history. Accenture has profited while working on the privatization of public services, from welfare systems to voting systems and has consistently pattern over-billed and exceeded estimates on projects. The company is a member of the US Coalition of Service Industries (USCSI) a coalition of service-based corporations lobbying for WTO-GATS agenda of privatizing public services. The company formerly had ties with Enron, and has a working relationship with Halliburton. Moreover, the company is incorporated in the offshore tax haven of Bermuda.

It is hard to say if Michigan’s Democratic Caucus will have any bearing on the future of Internet voting, as the technology is clearly not ready for widespread usage. It has not been adopted anywhere, as security concerns are still a major issue, especially in large elections where the results are considered more important and thus targets for manipulation.

People wishing to vote in the Democratic Caucus must be registered voters and must publicly declare that they are Democrats. However, they are not required to join the Michigan Democratic Party. Online registration begins on January 1st and ends on January 31st at 6:00pm on the Michigan Democratic Party website.

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We can Beat a Guy who Lost an Election to a Dead Man!

Posted on December 10, 2003 by | Comments Off

In Germany they first came for the Communists,

and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,

and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists,

and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist

Then they came for the Catholics

and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant

Then they came for me

and by that time no one was left to speak up.

- Martin Neimoller

It was early October and I was standing outside the Loosemore auditorium in the downtown campus of GVSU. There was a forum on the USA Patriot Act, hosted by GVSU and the US Attorney’s office for Michigan. I was handing out an information flyer for those going in when 2 campus security guards approached by to say “you can’t do that here.” I said it was a public forum at a tax-payer supported public university. Not to be outwitted the man sworn to protect and to serve said that it was a public university, but was privately owned. Therefore, I could not provide information to the public. I wasn’t following his logic, so I said that I was going to continue handing out flyers to all who would take them.

Minutes later the head of campus security came out and said “what is going on here.” I repeated that we were engaged in public education at a public university. He smiled and said that we were welcome to come into the event. I said we were planning on it, but were going to wait to the last minute in order to distribute the flyers.

The event was packed, standing room only. The US Attorney for Michigan first presented a power-point break down of the USA Patriot Act. I detest power point as a general rule of thumb, but this was even more obnoxious. You can’t take a very complicated issue like the USA Patriot Act (a 350 page document) and summarize it with bullet points, especially when people’s civil liberties are at stake.

The US attorney was followed by two GVSU professors, both of which had problems with the current legislation, but were only allotted a few minutes to make their case. Lastly, someone from the FBI spoke. He was very polished and adept at speaking in front of crowds. He was defending the Patriot Act by using two examples where the FBI was able to apprehend suspects who were on the verge of committing acts of violence, members of the Michigan Militia and the Unabomber.

As soon as the Q & A began someone quickly pointed out that both of the examples that the FBI agent gave to justify the USA Patriot Act were both acted upon before the 2001 bill went into effect, thus suggesting adequate legislation existed before the Patriot Act that allowed law enforcement to arrest people before they committed violent acts domestically. The Federal Bureau of Intimidation agent had no response. I then jumped into the mix by stating that the agent did also not provide the audience with examples of previous abuse by the FBI and other government agencies in regards to surveillance of citizens or organizations in the last 100 years. I mentioned that the FBI wire tapped the phones of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Black Panther Party, the Puerto Rican Independence movement and the Sanctuary movement. He agreed and then listed others ? the Japanese-Americans interned during WWII and the Palmer Raids. I was surprised that he would mention these examples and bolster my argument, but then he said something that revealed either his naivet? or his contempt for the public. He said “we did make mistakes before, but I think we got it right this time.”

Apparently the public is buying the fear mongering from US Attorney General John Ashcroft and company. As of this writing there are over 200 communities in this country who have passed resolutions against the USA Patriot Act. (Bill of Rights Defense Committee) Here in Grand Rapids there is an organized group called Citizens for a Safe & Free Grand Rapids. We have written our own resolution that we hope to get the City of Grand Rapids to adopt, adding their name to the litany of local communities who are saying that our security can never come from the theft of our civil rights!

You can download a copy of the resolution, petition and other educational materials on the USA Patriot Act at http://www.griid.org/progressivedirectory/campaign.php, or contact us at 459-4788×122 and we can mail you hard copies of the campaign materials. We are having a kick-off event on Monday, December 15, which is Bill of Rights Day. People are invited to join us at noon on December 15 at the Community Media Center, 711 Bridge St. NW, 2nd floor for a press conference.

Lastly, it is important for all of us to sign on to this for 2 very important reasons. First, while many of us may not feel like we are at risk with this new legislation others are. The American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee has documented hundreds of hate crimes committed against Arabs, Muslims and southeast Asians in the US since 9/11. As reflected in the comments by Martin Neimoller at the beginning of this article, let’s speak up for those who are more vulnerable to arrest under the USA Patriot Act. Secondly, we can’t let John Ashcroft and his cronies win. Here is a guy who lost an election in Missouri in 2000 to a dead guy. The odds are in our favor. Oh, by the way, you may not remember any news coverage of the GVSU forum on the USA Patriot Act in October. The reason being….the local TV news decided that an intra-squad game by the Detroit Red Wings at the Vandal Arena was more important.

Jeff Smith runs the GR Institute for Information Democracy, a local group which has just taken over the Total Information Awareness Project from John Poindexter.

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