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Thursday, November 12, 2009

FairVote Partnership with Internet Voting Company EveryoneCounts erased after post to election integrity group

Internet Voting Co. Everyone Counts touts partnership with FairVote, then webpage is scrubbed within days after made public to election integrity activists.

EveryoneCounts, or E1C has a partnership with FairVote, a non profit organization according to their website. It is troubling when an election related non profit endorses an insecure voting method. Computer scientists say that internet voting is insecure "there is ample reason to be skeptical of internet voting proposals". Internet security expet Avi Rubin says there is no way to secure Internet voting. Below is a screen shot of E1C's website touting the partnership. We obtained a screen shot via the Wayback Machine because the page was scrubbed sometime after November 9, 2009.


















(Click on the above message to see it in actual size.)

The page, before scrubbed, said:
"Fairvote in partnership with Everyone Counts and The Center for Voting and Democracy (Fairvote) have entered into an agreement to promote proportional representation in the United States."
This endorsement was visible at EveryoneCounts' website as recently as November 9, 2009.
That same day, I posted commentary about it at the Election Integrity message board, a group that FairVote's Director, Rob Richie recently joined. Richie defended the partnership saying that it was ok as the internet vendor had not donated funds to FairVote.

Revising history: The Partnership magically disappears. On November 12, just three days later, the link for the page about the FairVote/EveryoneCounts partnership is still there, but the content has been scrubbed.

Rob Richie argues that there is nothing wrong or pernicious about their Partnership with EveryoneCounts.

So why did E1C scrub their webpage within days after we raised the issue on a public list serve?

At this time, election integrity activists are fighting to prevent the internet voting. The powerful internet voting lobbyists are making headway in Alabama, Colorado, Massachusetts, and trying for Washington. The push is coming from: the Federal Voting Assistance Program, pushing for internet voting for military, Everyone Counts pushing for internet voting for all voting, and Scytl, who is hiring a salesforce to work with state legislators.

Internet voting will undo several years of work by national and state election integrity groups and will be far more dangerous than paperless computerized voting ever was.


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