parabens, Amilcar
----- Original Message ----- From: "Amilcar Brunazo Filho" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, January 12, 2004 3:36 PM Subject: [VotoEletronico] Artigo no Dallas News http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dallas/world/stories/011104dnintbrazilvote.7afec.html Brazil jettisons computer voting's paper proof Some concerned about fraud potential; officials say printers not helpful 08:31 PM CST on Saturday, January 10, 2004 By LESLIE M. MIRA / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil Nanoseconds after Andre Villarinho punches in a number, a photo of his pick for president pops up on a screen. Mr. Villarinho seconds his choice by tapping a green button, and exits the makeshift booth, worry-free that a vintage voting machine will botch his vote as they have for many Americans. "It's fast, and it's efficient," Mr. Villarinho, a state judge, said after voting for a president of the state supreme court here in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. In the past, vote-counting across the country could take days. Many of Brazil's local elections were seen as little more than heists in which political bosses bullied or bribed precinct officers. But Brazil's computer voting machines and their ability to generate a paper trail have won praise from tech experts and advocates for transparent voting methods some of whom are among the toughest critics of the United States' patchwork approach to devising voting technology. In the name of clean elections, Brazil has exported its know-how to Mexico, Argentina, and the Dominican Republic. Election officials here say Brazil, Latin America's biggest democracy, has advised India and the Ukraine on voting protocol. An urna, as the machines are called in Portuguese, sits in Washington, D.C., in an exhibit of voting machines. 'A trap' But Brazil, which has alternated between military dictatorships and democracy since the fall of the imperial monarchy in 1889, is discarding what has been hailed as a pillar of the machines' credibility the printers that provide voters with proof of their vote. "It's laying a trap that can be sprung any time," said Michael Stanton, a British-born Brazilian computer science professor at the Universidade Federal Fluminense. Mr. Stanton is one of a small group of tech-sophisticated Brazilian activists mobilized against the new law. "What is the point of this technology if they cannot be trusted?" he asked. Amilcar Brunazo Filho, an engineer in the state of Sao Paulo, said ditching paper ballots imperils Brazil's democracy. "With this bill," he said, "Brazil's electoral system steps back." At the behest of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's administration and the court that oversees elections, Brazil's Congress voted in October to stop printing ballots. In a telephone interview, Superior Electoral Court spokesman Paulo Cesar Camarao said printers hamper the voting process and they're costly. Besides, said Mr. Camarao, as students of Brazilian history know, paper ballots were used in the past to doctor results. "Paper itself offers no guarantee of a transparent election," Mr. Camarao said. Computer scientists have pressed for a paper trail in the United States, saying auditable checks help guarantee accurate results. "Without voter verifiable printers and a program to do manual recounts of the printed ballots with some frequency, the Brazilian system has all the problems that I'm complaining about in American touch-screen voting," said David Dill, a computer scientist at Stanford University. "Computers cannot be made completely reliable, and especially not completely tamper-proof." About 406,000 urnas were used in the landmark 2002 presidential election. The machines were backed up by batteries, which is essential for voters in the deepest reaches of the Amazonian jungle. Each machine cost about $420, works independently and is not connected to a mainframe, according to an elections department news release. Road show Debuting in 1996, the urnas were in all precincts by 2000. Election workers took urnas on road shows to show them to voters and set up dummy urnas in bus and train stations and banks so people could tinker with them. "In a country with problems of illiteracy and people who aren't familiar with technology, it was crucial to show off the urnas,"´ said Joabel Jose Pereira, who logged 12,400 miles in the cattle- and grain-growing state of Rio Grande do Sul. Brazilians may vote at age 16 and are required to vote at age 18. Before the urnas came along, voters had to write or recognize the name of their candidate a baffling and lengthy chore for the illiterate. Custom-made by Unisys and ProComp to government standards, the Brazilian-designed machines have created a buzz. High schools and professional groups have dumped old-style paper balloting in favor of the urnas. "The machines give you transparency. You can't joke with them," said Carol Majewski, head of a Porto Alegre lawyers association that used urnas to elect association leaders. "Our way is better than in the U.S." How does he know the urnas operate free of human or hardware bungles? "Because the engineering people tell me so," Mr. Majewski said. According to an early plan, all urnas were to print ballots that voters could see through a glass screen. The ballot would have a picture of their candidate before it dropped into a bag sealed to the device. Those machines were "definitely the right idea," said Dan Wallach, a computer science professor at Rice University in Houston who advocates that voting machines leave a paper trail. In last year's election in which more than 115 million Brazilians voted, 3 percent of the urnas used printers. Mr. Camarao said that printers delayed voting for 12 hours and that the printers don't handle Brazil's sub-tropical zones well. "The paper brings absolutely no advantage whatsoever," Mr. Camarao said. Debate over the revised voting policy comes as Mr. da Silva is seen tightening his hold on the ruling Worker's Party. This month, four people were expelled from Mr. da Silva's ruling Worker's Party because they voted against his pension system changes. Mr. Stanton said he sees no conspiracy in the works. But "it opens the door for trouble," he said, "and you can expect that something someday will happen." Leslie M. Mira is a freelance writer based in Buenos Aires. ______________________________________________________________ O texto acima e' de inteira e exclusiva responsabilidade de seu autor, conforme identificado no campo "remetente", e nao representa necessariamente o ponto de vista do Forum do Voto-E O Forum do Voto-E visa debater a confibilidade dos sistemas eleitorais informatizados, em especial o brasileiro, e dos sistemas de assinatura digital e infraestrutura de chaves publicas. __________________________________________________ Pagina, Jornal e Forum do Voto Eletronico http://www.votoseguro.org __________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________ O texto acima e' de inteira e exclusiva responsabilidade de seu autor, conforme identificado no campo "remetente", e nao representa necessariamente o ponto de vista do Forum do Voto-E O Forum do Voto-E visa debater a confibilidade dos sistemas eleitorais informatizados, em especial o brasileiro, e dos sistemas de assinatura digital e infraestrutura de chaves publicas. __________________________________________________ Pagina, Jornal e Forum do Voto Eletronico http://www.votoseguro.org __________________________________________________
