In response to the Teller-Woodland Green Tea Party's article.

Fellow Green voters,

The Teller-Woodland Green Tea Party's article warning about internet and computer voting makes some important points, but also adds misinformation and alarmism to the debate:

As the spearhead of Boulder's 1993 Voting by Phone ballot initiative I've been studying these issues since 1989. I read the pre-publication manuscript the authors of Votescam sent me in 1992.

What "Lotus" says about proprietary computer programs counting our votes without us (including election officials) knowing how the programs work is entirely correct and VERY important.

But the solution does NOT have to be abandoning computer vote-counting! A better solution is simply for the government to have a voting program and system made which is PUBLIC, with the "source code" open to EVERYONE so that we can all know that it is fair and accurate and incorruptible.

Lotus is wrong when he or she says "The programming instructions are contained inside a little black box. No citizens, not even our poll watchers, clerks, election judges, boards of elections, or Secretaries of States are allowed to look inside the little black box because it is proprietary property."

There is no physical "little black box." This is an ANALOGY often used by engineer or programmer types to mean a SYSTEM whose input and output are known, but whose inner workings are unknown. Such are the voting programs now used, which reside on computer hard drives, not black boxes.

Computerized voting CAN help make voting MORE secure. See our proposal for vote confirmation at http://vote.org/secure.htm At this point, telephone voting is much easier to make secure than internet voting.

Please also see my 12/15/2000 article in the Boulder Daily Camera about vote fraud at: http://thedailycamera.com/opinion/guest/25eguesu.html

Sincerely,
Evan Ravitz