Safety-Zones^®

Providing the Ways to Information & Identity Theft Protection*

Safety-Zones^® Verifies the Voter's ID and Insures One-vote Voting

       Voting is an information process that can be protected by Safety-Zones^®. The State would be the account holder. A city or town within the State would be a subset or 'client account holder'. Voters would be allowed to make specific election choices provided by the municipality.

In theory, when we look at the Safety-Zones process we discover that it has the features we would need to verify the voter's ID and insure one-vote voting either within a specific voting location or from anywhere by way of the Worldwide Web - the Internet, with 'processing' as safe as the billions of credit card transactions that are processed every day on private and secure networks. Let's first review each control feature that will do this individually then apply them to voting.

'Symbolic Representation' of the Safety-Zones process (for descriptive purposes only)

Information to be transferred waits for conditions ABCDEF to be verified before the transaction is authorized

----ll    ll---- this represents a circuit or gate to be closed to complete the transaction

A = How? A1 ----ll    ll---- A1 (B & M = Physical Location) Or A2 ----ll    ll---- A2 (Using the World Wide Web)

B ----ll    ll---- B = Who are you? = ID = Prove to me who you are by entering your Safety-Zones identification.

C ----ll    ll---- C = Which account are you using?

D ----ll    ll---- D = Where? Country? Area? Zip?

E ----ll    ll---- E = How Much? ($ Limit) and How Many? (Payments)

F ----ll    ll---- F = When? Only when I say so!

Applied to voting, here are the various ways that these parameters can be shared by each account holder and the Registrar of Voters (ROV) in a particular voting precinct for each voting transaction:

AV: Verification of how each valid voting account is to be used: This would take the form of whether you are expected to vote in your normal precinct (Brick & Mortar - B&M), by default, or whether you have been approved to cast an 'absentee ballot' by way of the private voting network (on the Internet). The selection would be made by the ROV or by you, whichever the ROV permits. The software program would be designed to provide and control these features.

BV: Verification of who you are for voting purposes: Although voting within home precincts in most locations is thought to be relatively accurate we have all heard of various forms of fraud. Here we ask that you read the section below on Proof of Identity. The software program would be designed to check and prove your identity before you are allowed to vote. This would end all vote fraud.

CV: Verification of which account opened in your name has your permission to be used. Initially, we are proposing that voting be on an isolated (voting only) or private network, so this feature would not be used. Later, when everyone is convinced that the process works as expected, the selection which could be made part of a wider-used network created for private information transactions - see guarding private information, like medical records and licenses, with a selection that is for 'Voting'.

DV: Verification of where each valid voting account is to be used has two (2) components: From and to:
1) The voting system (software) would permit the vote to come from only one preselected zone or area. For example, USA-Zip Code nnnnnn. Or if the person is known to be serving in the military in Iraq, for example, then only from a zone in Iraq. The system (software) could also be set to allow a voter to walk into to any voting precinct in the Safety-Zones voting system and vote.
2) The voting system would also control where the vote is to be recorded. To minimize complications and maintain the highest level of overall system performance, for verification purposes during a voting period when many transactions are be processed, we recommend votes be recorded only in the voter's home precinct.

The verification and approval of both geographic locations creates a voting transaction safety zone. When the vote is cast the transaction would record both the from and to locations for audit purposes.

EV: Verification of how many transactions are permitted: Here the system is preset to permit only one voting transaction per voter. Using the voter's home precinct to record the vote makes denial of a second vote in the voter's name simple.

FV: Verification of when each approved voter can cast a vote or set of votes: This also has two (2) components: 1) The day(s) and range of time over which the ROV permits votes to be cast, and 2) when the voter actually cast the vote(s) within the permitted time period. Both would be approved (or denied) and recorded.

We would also suggest that votes cast by people who are in someway not able to physically cast their own vote during an election be visited by an authorized agent of the ROV during the longer period usually allotted for absentee ballots, to allow each person to cast a vote by laptop computer via the Web under unbiased supervision, or perhaps by using a curbside 'votemobile'. This would, for example, prevent misrepresentation of those who are not able to come to the polling place because of physical limitations. And it would help those displaced due to natural disasters. When you fully understand and come to appreciate how the Safety-Zones process works doing this should not be of concern to you.

Block Diagram of the Symbolic Process

Safety-Zones is Circuit BV and is used to approve and control the voting transactions in Circuit AV

Web e-Commerce Zone
Private network
Encryption, only if necessary
.	A1 B&M?	B Who? (ID)	C Which Account?	D Where? (Safety Zone)	E How Much? How Many?	F When? (When I say so!)	.
	A2 Internet?
Encryption, only if necessary
Private network
Web e-Commerce Zone

Circuit BV

Circuit AV in this application is the one that exits to process your voting selections

Web e-Commerce Zone

Private network

Encryption, if used

< When all information in Circuit BV is verified to be correct and the circuit is closed your voting selections are permitted in this circuit - Circuit AV >

Encryption, if used

Private network

Web e-Commerce Zone

Circuit AV

Essentially, you would submit your voting choices, and at the same time give electronic approval for them to be cast within the settings of Safety-Zones.

       In the following example Safety-Zones is being used for voting purposes in a specific building designated for voting. (Not on a home computer or from a PDA.)

Exhibit AV

Here you are voting in the USA in your home precinct, which is Zip Code 29403 (Charleston, South Carolina), for one voting transaction. The number 2 represents the ID of your voting location and the specific 'machine' used; the number 3 represents the Safety-Zones personal ID that you created and you control; the number 4 represents the ID of your vote. Everything would be recorded in such a way so as to be able to match the transactions in both circuits AV & BV later. This clearly demonstrates that Safety-Zones can define a safe zone for a vote transaction.

With ROV approval, this process would eventually let any voter walk into any voting location, show appropriate identification¹, provide a computer system personal identity known only to Safety-Zones, then vote. The vote would be recorded in only the voter's registered voting location, and the transaction would record the exact location, time and date the vote was cast. With this process in place there would be no need for paper absentee ballots. This is shown in Exhibit BV.

Note 1: Showing identification when entering a voting location is meant only to support the idea that voting locations should be protected from vandals and to keep away those that don't belong in the voting location; it has nothing to do with the safety and security of the Safety-Zones process.

Exhibit BV

Here you have chosen to cast your vote from Zip Code 87501 (Santa Fe, New Mexico), and because you are registered to vote in USA Zip Code 84606 (Provo, Utah) that is where your vote will actually be recorded.

B&M	Internet	.	Qty	1	-	USA
- Safety-Zones® -		.	On	Off	Zip Code	Area Code
Your Voting Location		86	•	.	MHQ38	Mideast6
Your ID		17	•	.	MHQ38	Mideast6
Your Vote Permitted		18	•	.	66112	913

Exhibit CV

In this example you are in the military and on assignment in the Middle East represented by Mideast6. You have authorization (within the voting system) from your Registrar of Voters-ROV to cast your vote from there. 'There' is a military facility represented by MHQ38 that the Safety-Zones process recognizes as 'real'. Because you are registered to vote in USA Zip Code 66112 (Kansas City, Kansas) that is where your vote will actually be recorded.

These examples are for descriptive purposes only.

Proof of Identity (Copied, more or less, from page 2 for your convenience)

       Once Safety-Zones is put in place it is estimated that it will not only eliminate over 90% of the fraudulent use of credit cards, but it could easily provide for safe electronic voting. However, if we permit anyone to create or use an account with Safety-Zones, without proof of identity, then we are defeating the purpose of any identity theft protection process.   What follows is the same argument and proposed solution offered on a previous page.    

To ensure this does not happen, we need an independent identity verification process to prevent thieves from opening or continuing to use fraudulent accounts in the names of others. One method that might be used is to require that everyone signing up for identity theft protection be authenticated by a special computerized verification process managed by either authorized banks requiring proof of identity or by local police departments or motor vehicle licensing departments that perform the same task.

Once the person signing up for a Safety-Zones account is authenticated and his or her identifying information is placed in the system he or she would be allowed to create an ID known only to Safety-Zones that he or she may manage.

Physical identification will necessarily become an important proof of identity requirement to open a Safety-Zones account . For this police departments could purchase computers with special features for verifying information and collecting fingerprints to be used only in the identity theft protection process³. Each person wanting to open an identity theft protection account, like Safety-Zones, would bring the information to the police department, have their fingerprint(s) taken and pay an 'authentication' and setup fee for the service. This pays the police department for the computer and the online hook up, and the funds collected above their costs would provide a source of revenue to the municipality involved. The information collected would go into an identity theft protection database. Nothing would be done with the information collected until there is a conflict of information from the ongoing matching of information, at which time a designated authority would determine the problem and resolve it. Clearly, the fingerprint information would be used to ensure that no person has two names or two accounts, and that two different people could not claim to have the same social security number.

Note 3: This method would be superior to the method proposed by 3M (see Plague on Links page) in that there would be no need for anyone to carry a card imprinted with a fingerprint; the fingerprint would only exist in the database as physical proof of the identity of the account holder.

The system can also have built-in safeguards. For example, upon certification of death, an account can be kept active but permanently closed to use through Safety-Zones for x years or until the account is closed legally. The deciding and most important factor is that Safety-Zones provides the safety zone because it is always in the "off state condition", and only turned on to permit a transaction, so even upon death the account holder's accounts or information are protected against misuse. To gain the full benefit of Safety-Zones, off-line manual credit card imprinting and acceptance without some form of on-line electronic verification would need to be eliminated.

Back to BV

When used for voting purposes Safety-Zones^® is offered free of licensing fees

How You Can Help

       You can help us to help you by simply telling others about Safety-Zones, and by contacting your State Representative, Congressional Representative or State Senator. Eventually enough public pressure could also put the process in place, unless someone or some company has a better solution.

Links: State Government or search Yahoo or Google for 'state government webpage' . US House of Representatives webpage . US Senate webpage

Corporations that issue credit cards could also be contacted. Here is a partial list: Visa^® . MasterCard^® . American Express^® . Discover^®