After
It had been conclusively proved to the satisfaction of the Hon’ble
Supreme Court that our country’s EVMs ARE tamperable,  the country’s
Hon’ble Supreme Court has directed the country’s Election Commission to
introduce a paper backup of votes cast through electronic voting
machines, but allowed the commission to introduce it in stages during
general elections next year.Election Commission agreed in principle to
voting machines with printouts.

Last year, the Supreme Court of this country, having been convinced
of an undeniable, edible possibility of EVMs getting tampered with and
that easily hacked — even from afar — had ordered the imbecilic Election
Commission and the indolent Government to provide about 1600 crore
(1600, 0000000) rupees — convert this into your respective
currency! — for manufacturing these VVPAT (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit
Trail) voting machines; which show a verifiable paper receipt to the
voter.

1) Mr.Sadasivam CJI, a brahmin who passed the order of putting
new VVAT voting machines in use in a “phased manner”, has unwittingly
shirked its duty & committed a grave error of judgment dealt a fatal
blow to the Country’s democracy  who should have ordered, as a caution,
that till the time this newer set of about 1300000 voting machines is
manufactured in full and so deployed throughout the country, ballot
paper system would be brought in. No such precautionary measure was
decreed by the apex court.

2) Mr. Mohan Bagawath, a brahmin and a drop out who is not a
Constitutional expert says that there should not be any caste based 
reservation which is against the Constitution that provides reservation
for SC/ST/OBCs.

3) Mr.Narendra Modi, a baniya who contested elections saying that he
belonged to Backward Caste though he belonged to the Gandhi’s upper
baniya caste and violated all the Silas such as responsible for killing
large number of  human beings in 2002 Gujarat riots in the name of
religion as a result who was not given American VISA. He lied that he
was not married and became CM of Gujarat for 4 times. He looted the
Country’s wealth along with Capitalists and Industrialists and spent
crores of rupees to become the PM by way of paid news and advertisements
to almost all the media of our motherland made hay in May!

As this is a nation where intelligence of the Militant Stealth
Hindutva Cult of RSS brahmins rules in closed quarters, idiocy democracy
in the open. We make gods out of mud, then, prostrating before them, we
remain, as before, a dud. And, some times, in the name of our fancied
little god and his glory, my motherland’s favorite sons also kill each
other, with the deep ingrained vigor of all our bestial ancestry, and
like a whiff of wind are gone — dead.

Lest it becomes confusing, let’s say it as it is — we are , like
every other human being, are truly one really, really queer kin of apes.
In some fields, ahead of others and beyond compare; in other areas, we
are as silly and supercilious as a bull-hounded mare. In a nutshell, at
least in the loftier mystical and evolved spiritual circles “get” some
things well — like higher metaphysics — while failing miserably,
simplistically, in simple, elementary physics.

After all, who in one’s right mind would yet allow the use of
absolutely antiquated, completely out-dated, easily hack-able and highly
tamper-able “high school technology” based, obsolete EVMs (electronic
voting machines) in national elections, even now — in 2014?

More than 80 democracies in the world have simply done away with
them, dumping them in the trash, or simply declared the usage of this
simplistic voting system susceptible to fraud, and hence declaring the
same as illegal — as the Supreme Courts of Germany and Holland indeed
have done. Even Japan, from where EVMs originated, has long abandoned
its rogue babies, and is using paper ballot system since then. All the
advanced democracies in the West, except the most dull-headed ones, have
reverted to a voter verifiable system or the ballot paper. In Canada,
even at the ,most basic school level, ballot paper voting is in use.

Last year, the Supreme Court of this country, having been convinced
of an undeniable, edible possibility of EVMs getting tampered with and
that easily hacked — even from afar — had ordered the imbecilic Election
Commission and the indolent Government to provide about 1600 crore
(1600, 0000000) rupees — convert this into your respective
currency! — for manufacturing these VVPAT (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit
Trail) voting machines; which show a verifiable paper receipt to the
voter.

This is the Fundamental Right of a citizen of any democracy, as per
the laws laid down by the Constitution. Only 20, 000 such voting
machines have been provided for the entire country in this, 2014
election! The Country  has 29 states now — with Telagana being the
latest. In most of them, depending upon their size etc., either about
400 VVPAT machines are being deployed, or some such similar ridiculous
number — more or less — has been made available in the length and
breadth of the country. It’s an asinine, bland, cruel, demeaning joke we
1.25 billion jokers have been “blessed” with by the powers that be.

As to how EVMs can be hacked into, tampered with, and results
favorably manipulated via software interference and other means — from
near and from far, far away — this can easily be found by anybody by
just going to Google etc. and filling “EVM HACKING, TAMPERING” or
something to this effect in the Search. And lo, behold! a plethora of
information will just overwhelm your overly chilled-out, lesser
employed, un-billed brains.

Quite a few unscrupulous politicians and every other most
“honorable” political party worthy of its “salt”, such as Militant
Stealth Hindutva Cult RSS’s BJP  with the support of Supreme Court and
Chief Election Commission surely played this comic-tragic game of
hacking into and hijacking the votes of a billion people! Thus, one who
outsmarts the other such fine folks, armed with their hacking forks in
this merry-go-around, won.

The rest — this or that “tsunami” or wave in favor of one or the
other, poll forecasts and the “newbie”, the over enthused, seeming game
changers in the making — well, they may well fall flat on their dumb
faces.

Well, crib all you want. But don’t cry, my dear countrymen. After all,
the same model of EVMs is yet very much in use in South Africa, Bangla
Desh, Bhutan, Nepal, Nigeria, Venezuela etc. These poor folks of the
said “non-techy” countries — millions of them — too cannot figure out as
to what the hell had, yet is happening, in their dear short-circuited
“developed” democracies. Nor will you.

The process of elections is the most sacrosanct duty in a Republic
which ECI should carry out with utmost diligence. Caesar’s wife should
be above suspicion. Free and fair polls should not only be ensured but
APPEAR to be ensured to the satisfaction of the voters.

India first tested EVMs in a by-election in 1982, but the machines
were first deployed on a large scale of over 1 million in a general
election in 2004.
In 2010, security researcher Hari Prasad and his
associates released a video that they said demonstrated vulnerabilities
in the EVMs, after hacking an EVM that had already been used in an
election.

Prasad and his team replaced the display board of the machine with a
look-alike component that could be instructed through a Bluetooth
connection on a mobile phone to steal a percentage of the votes in favor
of a chosen candidate. The researchers also used a pocket-size device
that could be attached to the memory of the EVM to change the votes
stored in the machine during the period between the election and the
public counting session.

12614
http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/
Open Source Voting: Accurate, Accountable

Done
OVC is not active and we no longer have any plans to try to revive this organization.
We will leave this web site up as a resource for people interested in
the topic. We thank everyone who has contributed to this effort.
Current Efforts
OVC’s
three founders, Alan Dechert, Arthur Keller, and Doug Jones continue to
work on the issue of voting system integrity. Doug Jones (with Barbara
Simons) recently finished writing Broken Ballots. Arthur Keller is chair
of the IEEE 1622 standards committee. Brent Turner tendered the OVC
system to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in
early 2012.

Recent News & Events
Universal Voter Registration
I
received a letter (dated APR 7) via US mail the other day from a radio
station in Michigan on WPRR, Inc. letterhead, WPRR 1680, from Bob
Goodrich. I responded with a letter via mail — three pages. I was
tempted to respond with a simple, “no,” but I thought it was
interesting. I had a couple of other thoughts after I sent the letter. I
should have said “eliminate it or privatize it at the end of this
sentence.
Once we identify a function for government to handle (and pay for) on an
on-going basis, the impulse from the Left tends to be “federalize it.”
The impulse from the Right tends to be “eliminate it.”
Also, the basic difference between “universal voter registration” and
the idea of eliminating voter registration is the difference between
centralization and decentralization of the databases.
Here is the text from the letter:
Mr. Dechert,
Is Open Voting Consortium currently working on the
legislative steps required to enable “universal voter registration” for
federal elections? I suggest by the federal government assigning each of
us a specific federal voter identification number, the Republican
fantasized voter fraud allegations would be appropriately dealt with.
Each state could duplicate federal voter registration by continuing to
have local registration. Considering how Republicans have politicized
the mechanics of both voter registration and voting, I’d expect most
(particularly southern) states would continue local registration.
It would be a challenge for the Republican/Tea Party US Senators and
Representatives to oppose our democratic ideal of: one citizen, one
vote. With tens of millions (felons, college students) of federal voters
who could not be state/local voters, hopefully the contrived
disenfranchisement will trigger both an outcry and a change.
Kindest Regards, Robert (Bob) Goodrich
*************************** my response, sent via US Mail today
read more | Alan’s blog
Submitted by Alan on April 15, 2011 - 11:06am.
Artist’s Rendering of Proposed OVC Voting Booth

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. A higher resolution copy of this artist’s rendering is available here.
The
biggest challenge to making the OVC system widely available is creation
of the PC-printer unit shown in the drawing. It would be a
battery-powered inkjet printer with a processor (like Atom-based netbook
or nettop). We are working hard to find a hardware partner and
investment necessary to make this. The software and the other hardware
are comparatively easy to make.
The booth would fold up into a neat case about 28 inches by 26 inches
and about 3.5 inches thick, weighing around 20 pounds. Set up would take
only about 2 minutes. The pc-printer unit would store separately,
booted, connected and locked into place after the booth is set up. The
touch screen panel and cables would stay with the booth when stored.
Thanks to Morgan Hastings for making creating this rendering.
Alan’s blog
Submitted by Alan on August 4, 2010 - 10:08am.
My Testimony at February 8th Secretary of State’s Hearing
The
California Secretary of State’s February 8th hearing on “The Future of
Voting in California: The People, the Equipment, the Costs” was a good
overview of where we are at with voting system reform.
Open Voting Consortium has been pushing Open Source, Open Standards, and
the Electronic Ballot Printer (EBP) design. While not yet evident in
the systems in use today, I am happy to report that these concepts are
taking hold; Progress seems glacial at times, but we are getting there.
I attended and testified. I did not submit written testimony at the time
because I wanted to hear what was said and respond to that. My written
submission is now available.
Here is a summary of what I said:
    •    “Open Source” gaining currency
    •    Discerning voter intent was a key issue in 2000, and that issue remains unresolved
   
•    We need machine-marked printed ballots to eliminate the voter
intent issue. The federal program for military and overseas voters
embodies this concept.
    •    Progress correcting voting system faults has been very slow
   
•    The need for a common data format is now recognized. OVC has been
promoting the Election Markup Language (EML). We continue to advocate
for adoption of EML (now EML v6). Sequoia says they are starting to use
EML.
    •    Accessible voting booth at each poll site: high cost, high
maintenance, and low usage. This is causing jurisdictions to want to
eliminate poll sites. We need a different approach, especially for
accessible voting at home, which is where people with disabilities tend
to vote.
    •    Officials need to be more proactive to get the job done. We’ve
heard talk of “banding together,” and that’s the basis of the consortium
idea. Interested parties should be joining a consortium (like the Open
Voting Consortium) to solve these problems.
read more | Alan’s blog
Submitted by Alan on March 24, 2010 - 7:30am.
Los Angeles to see Best Voting System Demo of All Time this Weekend
This
weekend, we’re promising the best demo ever of an open source voting
system. We will be showing a touchscreen tablet PC, that will dazzle
conference goers (Feb 19-21 at LAX Westin *).
People visiting our booth will be able to create an election by filling
in an on-screen form. After that, we can create the bootable CD with the
operating system, ballot definition, and application software ready to
make a complete voting system.
We can then remove the hard drive (not necessary, but helps to
illustrate) and boot from the CD to turn the touchscreen tablet into a
touchscreen electronic ballot printing voting machine.
We’ll show the
whole process from specifying what goes on the ballot, to tabulating
the vote. All of this done with free and open source software …
inexpensive hardware.
While this is not a certified voting system for the U.S., it is already
pretty close to something that could be used right now in many
countries. And it could form the basis of a complete system for any
county — including Los Angeles — once we have the partners needed to
finish it and get it certified. Who knows? We may meet some potential
partners this week end.
One problem: I have to raise the money so I can pay bills and get
everything together for the trip to Los Angeles. If we don’t raise the
rest of the money we need, I don’t see how we can do it. Thanks to all
that have contributed, we are only about $1,100 short of what we must
have.
As someone who spent all day a week ago at the CA Secretary of State’s
hearing on the future of voting technology, I am here to tell you the
voting system is STILL a complete mess — the vendor-driven model based
on proprietary technology is completely broken. We can’t expect them to
fix it. We the people have to show the way.
If you care anything at all about the future of democracy,
PLEASE DONATE NOW
———————————-
read more | Alan’s blog
Submitted by Alan on February 15, 2010 - 5:45pm.
The Future of Voting Technology in California, the U.S. and the World: Why We Need a Decision Now
Open Voting Consortium (OVC) will be featured at the California
Democratic Party’s Executive Board meeting this weekend. I will have an
hour to present our case for why California should go for the OVC
solution — beginning around 6:00 pm in San Diego, Hyatt Mission Bay.
The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session.
Brigette Hunley, Chair of the California Democratic Party’s Computer and Internet Caucus recently announced,
Subject: CDP Computer & Internet Caucus Meeting
Please join us on Saturday night from 6 to 8 pm at the San Diego e-board for our Government 2.0 Transparency Series
Our featured speakers are from OVC and they promise an exciting discussion on the future of voting technology.
I hope to see you there!
Alan Dechert
Alan’s blog
Submitted by Alan on November 13, 2009 - 2:29pm.
OVC Presentation at National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Washington D.C.

One
of our top programmers, Parker Abercrombie, represented OVC at the
National Institute of Standards and Technology workshop on Common Data
Formats, OCT 30.
OVC has been pushing for Open Source and Open Standards for some years
now. By all accounts, our presentation there was very well received.
The slides used are available here in PDF format. You can find presentation slides for the workshop presenters at NIST.
Thanks to Parker and thanks for all OVC supporters that helped make this happen.
Alan’s blog
Submitted by Alan on November 13, 2009 - 2:05pm.
OVC gains momentum with San Francisco Event

This
was one of the more memorable events in all the years we have been at
it. There was a very nice article in the Fog City Journal: Pelosi Adds
Voice to Open Source Voting Systems Momentum.
Thanks to all that helped make this happen, and, of course, thanks to Christine Pelosi for brightening up the space.
Alan’s blog
Submitted by Alan on October 10, 2009 - 10:22am.
California Democratic Council Voters Enjoy OVC

Delegates to the California Democratic Council conference September
26-27 in San Diego had a chance to try out Open Voting Consortium’s
Electronic Ballot Printing system. It’s very simple: make your
selections on a computer screen, and then print out your finished
ballot.
“When will this be in all the voting booths in California?” That was the typical response.
Alan’s blog
Submitted by Alan on October 8, 2009 - 3:01am.
OVC Boosted by Series of House Parties

Thanks
to Eric Smith and all the fine people that attended the event Friday
evening at his home: it was a great event. We raised some money for OVC
and at least one more person agreed to host another event. Special
thanks to Brent Turner for his organizing efforts.
Importantly, for our campaign, we met quite a few new people. There were
about 20 people there that I had not met before. Attendees included
Debra Walker, candidate for Supervisor in the 6th district. Also
pictured above are Brent Turner and Eric Smith, who is running for
Supervisor in the 10th district.
Luke Thomas of the Fog City Journal was there and took quite a few pictures.
The attitude here was all positive. Yes, we can!
The
next event is at the home of Eve Matelan in Sunnyvale Sep 18th.
Christine Pelosi will speak for us at our Oct 1st event in San
Francisco. We are looking forward to building up a schedule of many more
events to gain consensus and momentum for Open Voting.
Alan’s blog
Submitted by Alan on September 8, 2009 - 11:19am.
OVC to provide Voting System for Democratic Party Elections
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Aug 4, 2009 Contact: Alan Dechert, 916-772-5360
President, Open Voting Consortium
4941 Forest Creek Way, Granite Bay, CA 95746
GRANITE BAY, CA — The California Democratic Council has asked Open
Voting Consortium to provide the voting system for their September 27th
Executive Board Elections in San Diego. This will be the most important
demonstration OVC has done of their voting system so far. Hundreds of
political movers and shakers will be trying out the system.
California Democratic Council President Henry Vandermeir made the
request, and said that they will be voting for president, secretary,
treasurer, and controller. Endorsements for statewide political offices
and policies will be included in the Sep 27th elections. OVC will
provide a booth for disabled access.
The idea initially came out of a casual conversation between OVC
stalwart Brent Turner and Mr. Vandermeir. Mr. Turner said, “People in
the Democratic Party frequently tell me they would like to try out the
Open Voting Consortium voting system. I am delighted that they will have
a chance to do that.”
“This is an important step for OVC,” said OVC president, Alan Dechert.
“We are moving closer all the time to having a system that can replace
existing flawed, secretive and proprietary voting systems for public
elections.”
Besides this large demonstration in September, OVC has other smaller but
important demonstrations to give to election officials around the state
of California over the next month.
Open Voting Consortium is a
nonprofit organization that develops and promotes free and open source
software for the conduct of public elections.
###
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting