[IP] The great Sarasota undervote mystery

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Stephen Unger <unger@cs.columbia.edu>
Date: May 3, 2007 5:54:37 PM EDT
To: Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>
Subject: The great Sarasota undervote mystery

There have been several studies of why so many people in Sarasota
County went to the polls and then appeared not to have voted in a
hotly contested congressional race. Was this a boycott? Did they not
notice the race because of bad ballot design? Was this due to a
program bug or hardware design error in the e-voting system? Was it
the result of a deliberate effort to corrupt the system--that may not
have worked  quite as planned? In any event, this case illustrates a
number of ways e-voting systems can go astray without leaving much of
a trail.

A report of an investigation of the source code by a high powered team
was recently published, followed by a criticism of that report.  The
problem remains unresolved, tho so far the courts have upheld the
official verdict.  I just posted my own analysis at
http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~unger/myBlog/endsandmeansblog.html

Steve
............


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