Saket Vora

Yesterday I headed over to UNC’s Morehead Planetarium where a new show called ‘Destination: Space’ was being premiered. It highlighted the history of spaceflight and where the future might go. The show itself was alright…for someone who has sought out many different productions on the history of spaceflight, there wasn’t much that surprised me. The intended audience is definitely grade school, but nonetheless it was nice.

But the real reason I went was because of the special guest: retired astronaut Charles Duke, lunar module pilot for Apollo 16 and one of 12 men who walked on the surface of the moon. He is a native North Carolinian, and participated in the production of the film. He told us a bit about his life, his thoughts when he was stationed at the Rammstein airbase in Germany in the 1950s when Sputnik went up, then in the early 1960s (”Suuuuure Mr. President, we’re going to the Moon! Yeah, right“). But when he went to MIT to get his graduate degree, he did his thesis on the Apollo guidance computer. Already a pilot, when he heard that NASA was inviting applicants for new astronauts, he applied and got accepted.

He was the capsule communicator (capcom) for the Apollo 11 moon landing, so he got to be in Mission Control when they did it. He was then backup pilot for Apollo 13, and was finally slated to fly on Apollo 16. He was rookie when he went into space, but his commander John Young was a veteran astronaut (Apollo 16 would be his 4th flight).

He said walking on the moon was comfortable and fun, though it was hard work. In the last few minutes of their 2 day stay on the lunar surface, he tried to see how high he could jump but got off balance and landed on his back. That was the only time he felt worried, because while the spacesuit itself was very strong, the life support backup was fragile. Fortunately, it didn’t get damaged. Even his fellow moonwalker Young chided him “That wasn’t a very smart thing to do, Charlie.” He talked about driving the moon rover around ($11 million car, electric, made by GM) and how fun it was. While it could go reverse, there were no rear-view mirrors and the astronauts couldn’t turn around in their chairs. They preferred wide u-turns instead. However, if there was a big boulder in their path, they would simply get out, lift the rover, and turn it around! I never heard that before.

There were two Army pilots there who waited early in line with me, and I got to talking with them. One of them is a real hardcore space nut. He has been to conferences and all these different events, and has personally met a lot of the other Apollo astronauts.  There was also a six-year old kid in a bright orange flightsuit with his parents. The kid is a real space fan, got to have his picture taken with Charlie Duke and got interviewed no less than four times. He loves penguins too.

I have uploaded pictures from a two week trip to Hawaii that my parents gave us as a graduation gift after high school, so that is from Summer 2003. Also online are photos from my parents trip to San Francisco last winter.

http://www.saketvora.com/gallery or click the ‘photos’ link above.

I’m hear to trumpet, once again, the sounds of alarm. I find it interesting how my student newspaper column on electronic voting, ran a week before all this other e-voting debacles hit the news.

As some of you know may know, the primary elections in Maryland that occurred over the past weeks have stunningly revealed the difficulties of implementing electronic voting to a public who has trouble with adopting new technology. The election administrators, officials, and poll workers didn’t grow up with GameBoys or computers or the Internets. Needed equipment was never delivered, some volunteers didn’t know how to setup or troubleshoot the machines when they broke, the Diebold personnel on hand had less than a day of training and didn’t know how to fix most of the errors. Machines failed to count votes in some cases, counted votes more than once in others, showed incorrect registration information, froze, restart, and did everything but blow up.

Flummoxed poll workers ran out of provisional ballots or backup paper ballots for people to use, at least, those who actually knew what the protocol called for in the case of an electronic malfunction. The delays at the polls caused long wait times.

And guess what. 40% of Americans will be using electronic voting machines this fall. Only 11 states make it mandatory for voter verifiable paper trails to be used.

We, the American People, sure got what we asked for when the federal government paid $3 billion to upgrade voting equipment after the ‘butterfly ballot’ debacle in Florida. And yet despite all this, there are no consistencies when it comes to voting. As a journalist noted, there isn’t just one election for president. There are 1300 differnet elections, because the policies/protocals/implementations for voting change on local and state levels.

Furthermore, just two weeks ago Princeton University revealed a hilariously pathetic vulnerability on a Diebold AccuVote TS machine. The door panel that prevents access to the machine’s memory card slot? Its lock is one of those simple industrial locks used in a wide array of devices, including hotel minibars. The professor tried one of his and voila it worked. It can also be picked in less than 10 seconds. Diebold says that this wouldn’t happen in a real election day setting. Oh really? These professors showed how one could open the door, put in one’s own memory card, and install malicious code into the machine’s software in under a minute. Oh, and is Diebold forgetting that a commonly used procedure by voting officials is to send home the machines a couple days to even a week before the election day to make election day easier. These machines are just in people’s homes, with little oversight or standard security.

It’s also wonder how Diebold refuses to let outside people (professors, research groups, think tanks, anyone) rigorously test their machines to check for vulnerabilities. One election clerk in California was worried about the Diebold machines so he called in a third-party voting rights group to check the machines. Diebold was furious and charged the county tens of thousands of dollars to fly down ’specialists’ to ‘fix the machines’.

And while I know people will instantly deride me for adding this comment, I can’t help it. In 2004, the CEO of Diebold say in a fundraising effort that he was committed to helping deliver Ohio’s electoral votes to the President. Outstanding!

Does anyone else find it crazy that across the country, the election policies/protocols of the states are often under the responsibility of a partison official, either Democrat or Republican? Election Commissions should be an independent, third-party, non-partisan group, not headed by a Democrat or a Republican member of the existing administration!

Maryland was the wake-up call. And this country is going to reap what it has sowed this November.

Yesterday night #20 Boston College came to town to take on our NC State Wolfpack. Expectations were low around town — we had just suffered two humiliating defeats at the hands of Akron and Southern Miss. People were fully expecting a crushing defeat at the hands of Boston College, which was ranked #20 in the nation.

As the game unfolded, thoughts started to change. Our defense was holding on strong, and while sophomore quarterback Daniel Evans often wore a ‘deer in the headlights’ expression on his face, he wasn’t throwing the game away with poor decisions. See, this was Daniels Evans first ever college career start in a football game. He is our backup QB that is supposed to come into the game when our main QB, Marcus Stone, gets injured or starts doing poorly. That’s what happened in the last game, and Evans looked surprisingly good. So Amato decides to have him start the game.

We were trailing late into the 4th quarter. We got the ball back but then an interception was thrown at around 3 minutes left. Despite Amato making some bad coaching decisions regarding clock management, our defense was good and was able to give the ball back to our offense with just under a minute left in the game. Evans starts getting into a rhythm, getting two first downs. 15 seconds left in the game, no time-outs left, 34 yards from the endzone:  Evans shifts around in the pocket to avoid getting sacked, then heaves a long pass deep towards the endzone. Our receiver jumps up, juggles it in his hands, but is able to cling on to it just as he’s hit out of bouds. TOUCHDOWN!

It was unbelievable. This can’t be NC State Wolfpack Football….can it? With 8 seconds left in the game, we go into the lead by 2 points. The Boston College kick return doesn’t go away, and we win!

It was the first time NC State has defeated a ranked opponent at home since 2002. Wow! What a win!

I was in Colorado last weekend at the Rocky Mountain National Park for the Class of 2007 Park Senior Retreat. It was a time to reflect on our past three years at NC State, to refocus and chart out our last year, and to catch up on friends we haven’t seen in long time.

Yes, yes. Need I explain this book any further? Overall, this is not Friedman’s strongest work. His book From Beirut to Jerusalem is better, but discusses a separate topic altogether. Perhaps my reception to the book was influenced I am more aware of technology, my father has worked on and spoken to me about world-wide supply chains, and my parents came to the United States from India. Much of the descriptions of technology and advancements in communications and supply chains felt too ‘gee whiz!’ to me, and a main criticism is that much of the first half of the book has to exuberant a tone and invented words for my tastes.
That being said, Friedman deserves a lot of credit and praise for summarizing and describing one of the most significant transformations of human society in an easy to understand way. He points out several key factors and uses many many examples to illustrate his points. Friedman came to his realization that ‘the world is flat’ in a discussion with an Indian businessman, and a good portion of the book concerns India and how it is tranforming itself. This was of personal interest to me, as the rest of my family is in India and I have visited the country many times.

I feel the second half of Friedman’s book is stronger than the first, for it delves more into how the ‘flattening’ of the world is impacting societies and cultures around the world. In particular, my favorite part of the book is actually the section in which he offers a reasoning for why the Arab-Muslim world is what it is now. I agree with the majority of his narrative.

All in all, I’d be more interested in a 10 year anniversary edition, so we can see how this all plays out.

This column was published in the September 7, 2006 edition of the Technician, the student newspaper of NC State. It provides a general introduction into the controversy surrounding electronic voting. Unfortunately, I was unable to include as many details as I would have liked due to space limitations. Discussion of severe security flaws in the Diebold voting machines and numerous instances of questionable activity around the country regarding electronic voting machines were unable to make an appearance. Still, I thought it was important to get this issue on the radar, particularly because it has relevance to North Carolina.

——————

In November 2004, in North Carolina’s Carteret County, more than 4,500 votes were lost due to confusion over electronic voting machines. County officials were told that each machine could hold 10,500 votes when they in fact could only store around 3,000 votes. Even though a warning message was displayed on the units after they became full, the machines were still left in operation to be used by unknowing voters. Because no paper trail was printed, these votes were unrecoverable.

This event encapsulates the many difficulties facing election officials at all levels of government. After the infamous “butterfly ballot” scandal that marred the voting in Florida in 2000, the federal government spent millions of dollars aimed at improving voting systems across the country.

A popular system is the optical scan method, which is essentially the “Scantron” technology that most students are familiar with. Another route is the electronic voting machine, using a method known specifically as DRE for direct recording electronic. These are computer-based with a ballot that appears on a touch screen.

DREs offer many advantages over paper ballots. The text size can be easily increased to accommodate voters with poor eyesight, and audio can be included so that seriously visually impaired people with headphones can cast their votes more privately. Multiple confirmation messages can be displayed during the voting process, ensuring that a voter has truly cast their vote for their desired candidate.

Occurrences similar to realizing that you filled in the wrong bubble or punched the wrong hole would dramatically decrease. Electronic voting machines would not be subject to the possibilities of human error or mechanical failures associated with paper-based counting methods, and the vote tallying would be immediate.

Finally, because the ballots are electronic, new or customized ballots can be created and distributed at much less expense to the state or local governments than printing hundreds of thousands of paper ballots customized for different districts.

Sounds pretty great, doesn’t it? A fundamental problem, however, is the belief often held by government officials that new technology can be a cure-all. Decisions concerning electronic voting are more often than not made by people who don’t fully understand the limitations or security vulnerabilities associated with it. Electronic voting is a different beast than traditional voting methods. The necessary changes in election procedures, policies, and training for volunteers are either not implemented, poorly developed, or not embraced by everyone involved.

Take for example the need for a voter-verifiable paper trail. A direct-recording electronic voting machine only stores your vote electronically. If there is a problem with the machine, there is no other way to verify the votes. Voting fairness advocacy groups and the Association for Computing Machinery, a premier professional society for computer science and technology, strongly advise that electronic voting machines produce a verifiable paper trail to be routinely checked against the electronic record to ensure the device is operating properly.

After the voting troubles in Carteret County, passed some of the most stringent legislation on electronic voting in the country. A key provision was that all the system code written or customized for the vote recording program had to be put into escrow and available for review. Diebold, a major manufacturer of electronic voting machines, refused to allow inspections. Despite their violation of state law, the Election Commission last fall certified the machines anyway. After public protests, a filed lawsuit and a judge who refused to protect Diebold from prosecution for violating state law, Diebold decided to pull out of North Carolina.

North Carolina is one of 13 states that mandates the use of voter verifiable paper trails. Nearly half the states, however, have no such requirement, including critical swing states like Florida and Pennsylvania. Every state must mandate a paper trail, and have procedures in place that routinely check this paper trail against the electronic vote. Voting center volunteers must be fully trained in the machines and all parties involved must understand the security vulnerabilities.

I disagree with those who want to completely ban electronic voting. It offers too many benefits in improving the voter experience to dismiss it entirely. Remember, technology like this is only as good as the manner in which it is implemented.

Link to Technician website here.

Man, I now know better than to put off the homework for my graduate analog electroncis class. The homework for it, due tomorrow, ended up being 18 pages long. And I’ve heard it gets worse. This Labor Day weekend I’ve mostly spent in getting homework done and writing papers. I played nine holes of golf Saturday morning with my sister, dad, and a whole bunch of other Indian friends. I made a couple of really nice shots, including a tee shot with a six-iron that landed 8 feet from the pin, as well as a 25 foot chip shot that went in. I like chipping a lot more than putting. I’m about to start work on a column for the Technician newspaper that will likely run on Thursday.

This Wednesday Dorothy Park, the wife of the late Roy Park, after whom the Park Scholarships are named, will be visiting NC State for the first time ever. It will also be the first time in 10 years, since the starting of the Park Scholarships, that the entire Board of Trustees of the Park Foundation will be visiting campus as well.

On Friday I met with Jonathan Wilkerson, a graduate student who works with Dr. Steer in a RF effects lab. I’ll soon be working underneath him for undergraduate research in building a large anechoic chamber for accurate RF measurements.

Look for my column to be posted here shortly. It will be on electronic voting.