I protest.

How to destroy a democracy, part 2.

Today's Salon has an interview ("Bad grades for a voting-machine exam") with a 28-year-old programmer named Jeremiah Akin, who observed a "test" of the Sequoia touch-screen voting machines used in Riverside County, California. He was not impressed, to put it mildly. His conclusion was that

"statements made by the Registrar of Voters indicated to me that she is not qualified to assess the reliability and security of such systems, and that she misunderstands some essentials of computer programming and operation. Her deputies refused to answer some important questions. Some statements made by officials at the Registrar's office, and found on the contractor's Web site, I learned on the test day were misleading or inaccurate. Further research after the test day has turned up several other reasons to doubt the reliability, security and accuracy of the system."

From his description of the so-called "test," it wasn't a test at all. The observers were unable to use the touchscreen or even to see its contents, the "test" was done entirely from a cartridge inserted into the rear of the device and it appears that no one hung around to see the "test" complete. The only evidence that anything like what should happen in an election did happen was an assertion by Mischelle Townsend, the Riverside County Registrar of Voters. In addition, the software that was running the devices was apparently running in "pre election mode," a test mode of some kind, and was not operating as it would in a real election.

I suppose that to someone not knowledgable in the field of computer science, programming or software engineering, this might seem sufficient. It's not. A real test would have had the software operating in full election mode, the testers would have been able to actually "vote" using the devices and they would have been able to verify that their vote was processed properly. That is how software testing works: You run it as if it were running for real and see how it works. If it fails, you fix it. In this case, this being a supposed verification before an actual election, if it failed, the devices should have been disqualified for use in the election. Unfortunately, the devices neither failed nor succeeded. They were not verified at all; whether or not how they performed in their "pre election mode" might match their performance in a real election (a seriously problematic situation itself), the "test" was a fraud. If I were to demonstrate software in the way Akin describes the demonstration that he witnessed, I would be very deservedly fired.

I will repeat my assertion, with emphasis:

The only evidence as to the proper operation of those devices presented at that "test" was the assertion by Mischelle Townsend that they worked correctly. All observers except Akin himself simply took her word for it. Akin refused to accept her assertion and tried to see for himself. For his efforts, Townsend has attacked him as (from the interviewer):

"a young man who had a chip on his shoulder when he came in here." She said that you came into the test with a "closed-minded" attitude and that you didn't want to "listen to the facts."

So rather than addressing Akin's concerns, Townsend attacks his intellect, ethics and objectivity. I'm afraid that the person in this situation, though, who has difficulty with their intellect, ethics and objectivity is one Mischelle Townsend.

Go read the article. It is both illuminating and very disturbing.

There are real and very, very serious concerns being raised by people like me, people who know software and who know how this stuff works. Rather than having those concerns be addressed, these people are being vilified, denigrated or simply ignored. The people pushing the touchscreen technology, whatever their motives might be, are behaving deceitfully, are hiding the actual operation of the devices and are providing no way at all to verify that they operate correctly. They want us to simply take their word for it that the things work like they say they work and like a voter might expect them to work.

Their word isn't good enough for me. It shouldn't be good enough for you, either.