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We'll formalize this later but in "rough draft" form, here's our recommendations:

1) Open source. Not necessarily GNU licensed, but the source code of all voting systems must be publicly available on the vendor's website plus at least one gov't website if not multiple - choices include the county elections department's websites, the Federal Election Commission, state SecState sites, etc. ALONG WITH the compiler and operating system makes and versions under which the code was compiled; that will allow us geeks to do our own compiles and generate our own hash results so that we can compare with "in the field" binaries. (I have to disagree with Dr. Dent on his point #2 in that I don't want to have to trust somebody else's hash numbers...I want to roll my own.)

2) Voter verifiable paper trails. The best such schemes are similar to the one Avante developed - your vote is printed on a paper strip "behind glass". You get to look at it, make sure it's OK and if you like it, hit "OK" on the touchscreen. A "robot snipper" clips off that piece of paper, it drops to the bottom of a sealed bucket and it's the official vote of record in case of recount. You don't use a take-up reel because then you can cross-ref the voter order with the vote order and figure out who voted for what. The voter cannot later prove who they voted for (it's not a "reciept") - that way "Guido" can't breaka you legga for voting "wrong" or pay you for voting "right". Oh, and the paper vote of record has an encrypted bar code strip to ID false "extra bits of paper", and minor mistakes in the dot-matrix print that are hard to spot but form their own second tamper-code.

3) This is the major piece that Bev Harris has contributed. Harris used to be a forensic accountant, meaning she dug into financial fraud for a living. In any accounting system, there are auditing procedures and steps at EVERY step of the way as cash is handled. Votes need to be handled the same way - there's documentation every time they change hands, there's a REAL audit trail, and similar steps that need to come from the CPA community. As one example: in a real audit trail, if data entry was done wrong and needs to come out, it isn't erased. It's MARKED (and datestamped) as "not valid" but it's still in there so you can see what happened. None of the current systems do this, with the possible exception of Avante (I'd have to take another look on that point.) Diebold, Sequoia, ES&S and Hart sure don't!

4) Mandate Read-Only-Memory storage of votes at the terminals! This is another thing Avante got right - and no, they ain't paying me or BBV.org a red cent. Their voting terminals burn the vote data to CD-ROM. Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia burn data to PCMCIA memory cards...which can be stuck in a laptop, encryption cracked and the data messed with as happened in Volusia County FL, Nov2000.

---------------

This is PRELIMINARY and should be viewed as such, but it's a pretty good guide to where our heads are at. Blackboxvoting.org (not just a website, we're a non-profit public interest educational/research foundation) will be meeting to discuss a formal proposal ASAP.

Jim March
Member of the BBV.org board of directors (Bev Harris is our Executive Director)
I'm also a co-plaintiff (with Bev Harris) in the current lawsuit against Diebold in California which State Attorney General Bill Lockyer just joined.

We'll formalize this later but in "rough draft" form, here's our recommendations:

1) Open source. Not necessarily GNU licensed, but the source code of all voting systems must be publicly available on the vendor's website plus at least one gov't website if not multiple - choices include the county elections department's websites, the Federal Election Commission, state SecState sites, etc. ALONG WITH the compiler and operating system makes and versions under which the code was compiled; that will allow us geeks to do our own compiles and generate our own hash results so that we can compare with "in the field" binaries. (I have to disagree with Dr. Dent on his point #2 in that I don't want to have to trust somebody else's hash numbers...I want to roll my own.)

2) Voter verifiable paper trails. The best such schemes are similar to the one Avante developed - your vote is printed on a paper strip "behind glass". You get to look at it, make sure it's OK and if you like it, hit "OK" on the touchscreen. A "robot snipper" clips off that piece of paper, it drops to the bottom of a sealed bucket and it's the official vote of record in case of recount. You don't use a take-up reel because then you can cross-ref the voter order with the vote order and figure out who voted for what. The voter cannot later prove who they voted for (it's not a "reciept") - that way "Guido" can't breaka you legga for voting "wrong" or pay you for voting "right". Oh, and the paper vote of record has an encrypted bar code strip to ID false "extra bits of paper", and minor mistakes in the dot-matrix print that are hard to spot but form their own second tamper-code.

3) This is the major piece that Bev Harris has contributed. Harris used to be a forensic accountant, meaning she dug into financial fraud for a living. In any accounting system, there are auditing procedures and steps at EVERY step of the way as cash is handled. Votes need to be handled the same way - there's documentation every time they change hands, there's a REAL audit trail, and similar steps that need to come from the CPA community. As one example: in a real audit trail, if data entry was done wrong and needs to come out, it isn't erased. It's MARKED (and datestamped) as "not valid" but it's still in there so you can see what happened. None of the current systems do this, with the possible exception of Avante (I'd have to take another look on that point.) Diebold, Sequoia, ES&S and Hart sure don't!

4) Mandate Read-Only-Memory storage of votes at the terminals! This is another thing Avante got right - and no, they ain't paying me or BBV.org a red cent. Their voting terminals burn the vote data to CD-ROM. Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia burn data to PCMCIA memory cards...which can be stuck in a laptop, encryption cracked and the data messed with as happened in Volusia County FL, Nov2000.

---------------

This is PRELIMINARY and should be viewed as such, but it's a pretty good guide to where our heads are at. Blackboxvoting.org (not just a website, we're a non-profit public interest educational/research foundation) will be meeting to discuss a formal proposal ASAP.

Jim March
Member of the BBV.org board of directors (Bev Harris is our Executive Director)
I'm also a co-plaintiff (with Bev Harris) in the current lawsuit against Diebold in California which State Attorney General Bill Lockyer just joined.

We've seen what can happen with the diebold machines

Yeah, but have you seen this? Don't even need a Gameboy to hack the election...

From the article:

Officials in Nye County couldn't read the data on one computer but weren't overly worried. If they couldn't tease the results out of the machine -- which held an unknown number of votes -- they could count paper ballots by hand instead.

Computers should never be used to tabulate voting results in the first place. If the computer's reported results don't trip someone's suspicion, they can still be wholly wrong and hand victory to an unelected candidate (particularly in close races). Computers are wonderful for preparing a voter-verified paper ballot (for instance, there are significant advantages to using a computerized machine which grant blind and illiterate voters anonymous voting power). But any computer tabulation of votes can lead to what Bev Harris is demonstrating in the Diebold tabulator machines (she has pinned the story to the top of her website because it is so important). The equipment machine used by the voter can be done excellently, including running on free software. But if the votes are passed to an unaccountable system where recounts are meaningless, elections can easily be subverted. I understand that people want results quickly, and I know that quick returns is one of the promises of electronic voting. However, I prefer results that can be verified meaningfully and I'm willing to wait to get those results. Therefore, I think the best way to count ballots is to get rooms full of people at tables hand-counting ballots. In my opinion, a knowable error rate is better than a unknown error rate.

I'm on the committee to recommend voting machine equipment to the County Board in Champaign, IL. A number of us on the recommendation board get together once a month (more often if there are pressing issues before us including field trips to see various machines and ask questions of people in the field using the equipment) and discuss these issues with a goal of arriving at something we can stand behind and recommend.

According to http://lists.seifried.org/pipermail/security/2004- August/004631.html and http://www.blackboxvoting.org/?q=node/view/78, there is even more than just missing security in the Diebold election machines. If these are true, than Diebold might have more troubles than it seems so far.

But, let's all yammer about California suing them while ignoring the huge revelations that have happened in the last two weeks WRT Diebold.

California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said on Tuesday he would sue electronic voting machine maker Diebold Inc. on charges it defrauded the state with false claims about its products.

By entering a 2-digit code in a hidden location [on the vote tabulation machine], a second set of votes is created. This set of votes can be changed, so that it no longer matches the correct votes. The voting system will then read the totals from the bogus vote set.

Why isn't the attorney general taking them to court over that?

What do you mean they haven't done anything wrong?

Given the "quality" of the product and the "mass vote switching feature", it should be considered treason to try to sell such a product for national/state elections.

The politicians and everyone along the line who helped approve such a product should also be tried for treason too.

The US claims it is serious about democracy. If it is then all this crap should be considered treason.

The US is willing to spend billions and sacrifice thousands of lives to pick the leaders in Iraq. So which is more important? Picking the leaders of Iraq or picking the leaders of the most powerful nation in the world?

Has anybody tried talking to non-computer people about electronic voting? I've tried it a few times, even toning down things, but people often either don't understand what's at stake or assume I'm exagerrating.

I think this is quite possibly the most important US domestic issue this year, and feel that the word needs to get out about this, so we can try to fix what we can before it's too late. Unfortunately, I haven't been successful thus far. Has anybody else had better luck?

Blackboxvoting.org is the best source for any election-machine info ...

Indeed, and the story they have pinned to the top of their main page is one that should be bought to the attention of as many voters as possible. Anyone who hasn't read it should go read it now. It tells you a lot about how the next election will be run. The fix is in, and it's gone through a lot of beta testing. If your precinct uses Diebold voting equipment, your vote is irrelevant.

Funny thing is that I haven't heard this mentioned by any American media. Not even NPR. It should be all over the place. The fact that it isn't speaks very loudly about that media.

You might be also interested to know that their system has a HUGE security hole (backdoor).

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/?q=node/view/78

Blackboxvoting.org is the best source for any election-machine info (such as which party's contributors run Diebold).
Greg Palast is an American living in England who writes news for the London Sunday Observer.

I also check out, Indymedia, CNN, The BBC, and Google News.

The fact is that Every source you turn to is biased. I'm of the opinion that there is no such thing as unbiased journalism becuase journalists are people with finite amounts of time on their hands and finite column-inches to fill. They have to decide who they interview and how much of that material to use. I doubt that most of them (save those at Fox News) go into it with a definite story in mind and ignore all evidence to the contrary. Nevertheless, biases appear in reporting. Couple this with the fact that all news outlets have a distinct audience and that their preceptions of that audience shapes their reporting to the extent that they wish to attract new audience members and avoid losing old ones. This qorks out differently for Indymedia than it does for CNN but the pressure is still there.

The bottom line is that all you can do (as others have pointed out) is to cast as diverse a net as possible and then to look, as much as is possible, for the nuggets of truth in each one. Just be wary for many people the line between reality and fiction is no longer a barrier.

As to government documents, I wouldn't diss them. They are the one true source of info that we have about the workings of our government. And, so long as Some People can be held in check

You don't see much difference? You from the US of A?

The Indians are likely to riot if they suspect the candidate with fewer votes won. Or if something fishy was going on.

The US folk will just switch channels and watch MTV or Superbowl or Fox News.

I was not saying the Indians are a more peaceable folk. I'm implying they are prone to rioting BUT their election system works better, and the evidence is that there was minimal bloodshed due to the elections.

The vulnerabilities theoretical? Are you sure this built-in vote rigging backdoor is theoretical? Are the two of them liars? If they are telling the truth then it sure isn't theoretical, it just hasn't been used in a live/production environment yet.

And to those who moderated my grandparent post flamebait: "why do my eyes hurt", "coz you've never used them before".

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/ appears to have been taken down by The Man. Hmmm...

It isn't a bug at all, according to the article. Diebold apparently put it there on purpose. I'm sure they merely want to be able to correct the votes of people who, um, "acccidentally" voted for the wrong candidate.

Read the fine article, it is NOT a bug. It's a "double-booking" exploit which Diebold apparently put in on purpose.

From TFA:
This program is not "stupidity" or sloppiness. It was designed and tested over a series of a dozen version adjustments.

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/?q=node/view/25' (SQL Injection vulnerability) You'd think that people who knew so much about what's wrong with Diebold security would do their own homework first. Not to let Diebold off the hook but we all have our due diligence to follow. Kudos to putting the pressure on Diebold but let's try to lead by example shall we?

sPh

Many of us are not standing idly by http://www.blackboxvoting.org/

How can you have trust in a system that does not dare to have the voters verify that their votes are counted correctly?

Many of us don't trust the system, but are forced to use it.

How can you have "voting machines" that leave even the slightest doubt about what the voter wants to vote?

Ask Diebold and the Republican politicians that they so unabashedly support.

If /. Readers had an impact how was it done? Was there a petition link on the previous story that I missed? Was there a letter writing campaign that I missed? Or the the LWV leadership (and the hundreds of their members who oppose paperless ballots) simply derive all their impetus from the firestorm going on in the comments? Did thjey for example read them and think, "wow we have to move now or these people may moderate each other more heavily!"

I am not minimizing the role of discussion here nor am I saying that posting a comment on /. is a waste of time.

What I am saying is that comments on /. stay on /. If you want to pressure other groups don't expect that they will read your comments and change their minds. What you do is take action at the EFF, join the ACLU, get organization info from Blackboxvoting.org, or send letters to the appropriate people (Congress, Whitehouse) . You can even create your own online petition at PeitionOnline.com. The key is to branch out to others and raise their conciousness level not preach to the choir.

With the number of U.S. slashdotters out there, we can certainly bump this in the thousands, go sign the petition:

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/BlackBoxVoting.org.h tml

Go and show that it's not just a dozen paranoid freaks out there that think the system is broken.

The Commission was created by the HAVA act that passed in 2002. Yet they are holding their first meeting now in 2004. Is anyone else bothered by this?

And, just to add to the other debate. I for one think that an opinion poll is only half the issue or less. It is important that the public trust the machines but only if they do so based upon truth not a well-run ad campaign. Unfortunately what this shows is that Bev Harris's Words are not reaching the public as a whole.

In part this is unuspprising. I recently chatted with my local elections official. He allowed as how the public doesn't think about elections except twice a year on voting day and on the day after voting day. While he worries about this stuff and wants funding and time to deal with it, noone else cares, they just want it to work.

This is in large part due to the fact that we have all been trained in this manner. Consider school (in the U.S.) in it we are taught all about the vot, all about the elections system and the holy vote. Little if any time is spent (in my experience) on other (continuous) forms of public participation (running for office, attending council meetings, etc.) As a result everyone is trained to think that the vote is everything and that, for the rest of the year its out of their hands.

The real issue is how can we override this perception/instinct. How can we shatter the blind faith that most people have in the parties?

Also, under normal circumstances I would not be posting anonymously, but considering what the writer at blackboxvoting has to say about this issue, it may not be wise to do so... as I don't have my aluminum foil hat, and my computer monitor is watching me right now...

I would put a direct link with the anchor in, but there isn't one on the site, do a search for the title...

[QUOTE]

The Secret Service Wants Your Name: Will "subpeona" this web site?

...

Okay, a word about VoteHere: This is the company that has no visible means of support. It doesn't seem to sell anything. Its board is heavily infested with defense industry types -- a former CIA director (Robert Gates, now heads George Bush School of Government); it had Admiral Bill Owens, also Vice-Chairman of SAIC and a member of the Defense Policy Board with Perle and Wolfowitz, a very close friend of Cheney; currently headed by former Washington Secretary of State Ralph Munro.

VoteHere announced that it would be releasing its software for review, back in July 2003. It was planning to release it in September, and was supposed to do so to Dr. David Dill's web site. It never released the code, just a bunch of literature about its product. (It did release some, but not all, of its code this month, making a big splash about it). About a week into October, I got solicited with an email click this link for VoteHere software.

Now who would fall for that? Why would anyone in their right mind grab the stuff in some clandestine manner when it was being released into the open momentarily? And this is a company that never sells anything. Who gives a shit anyway, what its software does? It now is trying to peddle yet another alternative to a voter verified paper ballot, an idiotic solution where we turn over auditing of the vote to a handful of cryptographers who work for a private company with defense industry ties. No one I know thinks that is even a viable concept, so why would we care to examine the software these cryptographers make up?

I was in the ending stages of writing my book, putting new chapters online every few days, at that time. Like I'm going to hack into VoteHere (those who know me realize that I couldn't hack my way out of a paper bag) -- this was just dumb.

I turned down the software. In early January this year, VoteHere does a press release that it was hacked in October and tries to blame it on the activism community. I published an article expressing doubt that we'd gotten the whole story.

Now, I have been interviewed by the Secret Service on this VoteHere hack story about five times. They never spend much time on the hack. Most of the time is spent on the Diebold memos, which they claim they are not investigating.

Here's the deal: The leaking of memos to journalists is not something the government can come in and demand to investigate very easily...

[/QUOTE]

I'll save you the trouble.

Largely, the non-slashdot concerns about e-voting seem to center around unintentional inaccuracies, like those mentioned in the FA. In other words, the worst problem typically mentioned is about errors causing disenfrachisement or delays in voting. While I don't want to discount these problems, they are fixable, either by a paper backup system or timely software or hardware repairs, likely getting better and better as the machines become more widely used.

Personally, my real concern is about intentional vote fixing by the makers of the machines. I know this has been talked about at great length on /. and elsewhere, but I think it needs more attention in the real world.

I know I'm naive, but the thought that somebody would try to steal the election infuriates me. There is no pit deep and black enough for someone so unpatriotic and dishonest. We must fight to protect one of the greatest experiments in personal freedom in the history of humanity.

Please, take the time to write your CongressCritters about e-voting in the House and Senate.

This is big news guys, gals and CmdTaco

Check here later
Blackbox Voting.org

Anyone who is really wants some great info on Dibold, and the many flaws with electronic voting should IMO check out the following sites...

blackboxvoting.com, and blackboxvoting.org.

One of the sites is alwys up, one is often down because Dibold has been doing everything that it can to shut down the sites.

The .com site has a free PDF version of a great book called blakbox voting by Bev Harris PhD. (I'm shocked the EFF did not mention her.)

Do you want to install and run "Diebold Electronic Voting Machines" signed on 01/24/2004 12:04 PM and distributed by:

Diebold, Inc.

Publisher authenticity verified by Karl Rove.

Caution: William Diebold asserts that this content is safe. You should only install/view this content if you trust William Diebold to make that assertion.

[] Always trust content from Diebold, Inc.

[Yes] [No] [More Info]

No. You should be able to SEE your results before they go into the ballot box, but you should not be able to TOUCH the ballot.
That might allow you to remove it from the polling place and do $DEITY-knows-what with it.
It should pass from beneath a transparent panel to the ballot box when you hit the Cast Your Vote button.
Bev Harris writes knowledgeably about this.

Cringely has an even wiser suggestions: KISS.
The Canadians use a marker-and-paper-only system with "scrutineers". It works very reliably.

gewg_

The 2000 Election was also the first presidential election in which Diebold machines were used. Florida's Velousa (sp?) County. When the initial results came in they were devastating -16,022 (yes that's a negative number) votes were cast for Al Gore. This massive deficit caused Gore to appear diasterously behind Bush in the polls. It was at this point in the night that Gore gave his first resignation speech.

Later on the "official" counts were reset and a (more belivable) set of (nonnegative) numbers came in from the county in question. Gore then retracted his resignation. However that resignation came back to haunt him during the court case because Kathrine Harris used it to argue that he had already qut the reace and wasn't entitled to a recount.

Notreably, the recounts took place in other counties as Velousa county's machines did not produce paper records and could not be verified.

See Bev Harris's Site Blackboxvoting.org for details. See here for data on Volusia county. See here for internal Diebold memos discussing the -16,022 problem, and see here for more general info on the 2000 election.

The 2000 Election was also the first presidential election in which Diebold machines were used. Florida's Velousa (sp?) County. When the initial results came in they were devastating -16,022 (yes that's a negative number) votes were cast for Al Gore. This massive deficit caused Gore to appear diasterously behind Bush in the polls. It was at this point in the night that Gore gave his first resignation speech.

Later on the "official" counts were reset and a (more belivable) set of (nonnegative) numbers came in from the county in question. Gore then retracted his resignation. However that resignation came back to haunt him during the court case because Kathrine Harris used it to argue that he had already qut the reace and wasn't entitled to a recount.

Notreably, the recounts took place in other counties as Velousa county's machines did not produce paper records and could not be verified.

See Bev Harris's Site Blackboxvoting.org for details. See here for data on Volusia county. See here for internal Diebold memos discussing the -16,022 problem, and see here for more general info on the 2000 election.

The Campaign for Verified Voting in Maryland has a website at www.truevotemd.org. If you're a Maryland voter or just want to show your support, go there and sign up. If you're going to vote on Tuesday in Maryland's primary, we're organizing a protest to demand paper ballots.

The problem in Maryland is that the officials at the State Board of Elections are in Diebold's pocket. Realize that San Diego and other California counties are getting voter-verified paper trail equipment from Diebold for free, despite paying only 60% as much for the machines as Maryland. Maryland also bought a much larger order. However, since the SBE officials won't go to bat Diebold is trying to charge big bucks for the VVPT. Diebold is also spending heavily in lobbying and contributing to the Maryland Delegates and State Senators who could pass legislation that would force a VVPT.

Some other good sites if you're interested in this topic:

www.verifiedvoting.org
www.blackboxvoting.org

--Paul

Oh, and I can't leave without mentioning the essential Black Box Voting site...

[posted as an AC as I don't want to whore the karma]

That's not entirely true - otherwise we wouldn't have any use for ECC or parity. Computers can make "mistakes" in as much as data can be corrupted by physical processes that having nothing to do with the intended or programmed operation.

Technicalities aside, none of the election problems are about counting accuracy, neither human, nor mechanical, nor electronic. That's not the point. All measurements have an associated accuracy. It's how we deal with it that counts. If the margin of the election is of a size that given the error rate of the system there's a "reasonable" probability that the outcome is in error (1 sigma, 13% probability of error, say, given the error rate of the technology used) then a run-off election should be automatic, even if there's only two candidates in both elections. No matter what the voting technology. A 5% threashold would be statistically supportable.

All sampling systems have a margin of error. It's a 9th grade science mistake to get an F for submitting a graph of plant growth or whatever without any error bars. We seem to suffer from cognitive dissonance in refusing to admit there's an inescapable margin of error, and thereby not accommodating for it.

In 2000, FL and several other states should have held run-off elections between W and G after the first election found them at a "statistical tie". It's not clear which way it would have gone after that, but whoever thereby won would actually have been a democratically elected president, rather than one technically appointed by a divisive judicial coup.

Anyway, the critical failure regarding DREs is the lack of recognition that they are fallible. How do we deal with critical systems that might fail? We create an audit trail so if something goes wrong, we have a chance of undoing the error, or at least figuring out what failed and fixing it, and at the very least knowing that something did in fact go wrong so we can try again.

The systems shipped by Diebold and ESS etc are both intrinsically fallible and intrinsically inauditable, which is intolerable. Further, if a voter has reason to doubt the impartiality of a company that has, for example, pledged to deliver it's electoral votes to the republican in the next election to be run on it's own vote counting equipment, they might have some reason to doubt the veracity of the black-box tallying process and that undermines the authority of democracy. It is important, therefore, even if it were proven technically unnecessary, to provide voters with the familiar indicator of fairness provided by a human-readable, authoritative, tangible ballot.

We've gone through a lot of effort convincing ourselves, and by force much of the world, that having a brainwashed electorate choose one or the other corporate flack as titular head of the country is the best and fairest form of government on the planet (and it may well be, alas); at the very least we can apply basic 9th grade science to finding out whether tweedle dee or tweedle dum won the popularity contest.

We need your help!

HR 2239 is a bill which requires all touch-screen voting machines to produce a paper receipt which the voter can read and verify, then drop in a lock box. The receipts in that lock box are used in a recount. This bill also mandates a recount in 0.5% of districts chosen at random to verify that the touch-screen voting machines are reporting the results accurately.

Sign the online petition to support the bill. Contact your representatives, educate them and demand they support the bill.

We also need legal help with injunctions against the machines, starting with the 37 Diebold states. The organizers of BlackBoxVoting.org have 65,000 documents to make the case.

No we can't. Diebold is seeing to that. Democracy is just smoke and mirrors, thanks to technology. Maybe it always was.

We were also covered last week in the New York Times and USA Today. For many more details about the Rob Georgia story from WiredNews, download the new Chapter 9 pdf for the Black Box Voting book -- as of this writing, BlackBoxVoting.com is once again taken down, again for a bogus spam harrassment report -- conveniently, within 12 hours of posting this new chapter -- so you'll have to go to a backup site to download the chapter. The BlackBoxVoting.org site is still down due to a Diebold DMCA action.

In Chapter 9, you'll see that Diebold also seems to have lost the bug reports from Georgia and that internal memos show that six or seven patches were done, not just one. This went all the way to the president of Diebold, who at one point yelled at Rob "We don't need YOU airing OUR dirty laundry!"

Nice folks, lovely voting system.

Bev Harris Author of Black Box Voting

1. Audit by security researchers reveal serious vulnerabilities
2. Diebold downloaded ongoing ballots (a federal crime) during California's last election (not the recall)
3. The whole "Rob-Georgia" fiasco that Wired is writing about
4. Diebold's executives are uniformly partisan political donors
5. Diebold's CEO is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year".

"Control Culture"

A few people, however, aren't thrilled at the prospect--e.g. the RIAA, Microsoft, and the movie industry. Unfortunately for us, these entities use their market dominance and political clout to monopolize the evolution of culture.

After all, what exactly are record companies good for anymore? In all their success in painting filesharers as amoral fiends who are stealing from the artists, they've apparently forgotten that stealing is how they make their living. Most RIAA musicians sign away the rights to their music, their style, even their own name, and yet never see a dime from their labels. The cost of a CD goes almost entirely to marketing (i.e. getting us to buy it), and to the maintenance of an outdated business model. In a world where recording is cheap and distribution is free, why should we support a bloated, inefficient industry that inflicts Top 40 "Hits" on all of us?

We are losing control of our culture on two fronts: one legal, one technological. In 1998, Congress passed the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). Among other things, this law makes it illegal to copy a DVD or to play one from overseas--even one you've purchased legally. The DMCA also gives copyright-holders the power to shut down a website for ten days just by contacting its ISP... without evidence, liability, or judicial review. Diebold Corporation has been taking advantage of this to suppress information about egregious flaws in its widely-used electronic voting machines.

Perhaps even more frightening is the fact that Microsoft and friends are currently working to make it not only illegal to resist their vision of the future, but actually impossible. New versions of Windows will tie in with a chip in your computer to remotely monitor and control what you can do with it. They claim that their system will be voluntary, but how voluntary is it when opting out means not being able to open Word documents and PDFs? Even if consumers were informed about it, they wouldn't have a choice; Microsoft's monopoly--not the market--dictates what people can buy.

While groups like Microsoft and the RIAA claim that their power grab is necessary to stop evil, they ignore an evil that most of us don't think about: although a powerful few benefit when culture is centrally controlled, we all benefit when ideas flow freely in society. Imagine where science would be without the open exchange of ideas in journals and conferences. What if every novelist had to pay Proust for his insight into the art form? Ideas are made of ideas. Culture is always ripped, mixed, and burned from other culture. This is why we evolved communication in the first place: for humans, cooperation is the killer app.

We must create a sensible regulatory system that allows for the open exchange of ideas, as opposed to the Orwellian vision of the media cartel, where your computer is nothing more than a vending machine and the Internet is glorified television.

---
Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons
scdc.emegaweb.net

Watch this story for updates
Why, was the voting computerized?

Gator Graphics? Hmm...

Just a note that I'm hoping to see the BlackBoxVoting donation forms available soon - this is essential work that the /. community should actively support.

Also, extra thanks to Bev for her recent efforts to post notifications and address issues on this site; because of this I'll be purchasing a copy of her book. The publisher's iconogrpahy is unfortunate for promotion purposes, but ultimately irrelevant to the books' content.

Sent: Wednesday, January 17, 2001 8:07 AM

"Hi Nel, Sophie & Guy (you to John), I need some answers! Our department is being audited by the County. I have been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16022 when it was uploaded. Will someone please explain this so that I have the information to give the auditor instead of standing here "looking dumb".

"I would appreciate an explanation on why the memory cards start giving check sum messages. We had this happen in several precincts and one of these precincts managed to get her memory card out of election mode and then back in it, continued to read ballots, not realizing that the 300+ ballots she had read earlier were no longer stored in her memory card . Needless to say when we did our hand count this was discovered.

"Any explantations you all can give me will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks bunches,
Lana
"

followup:

Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 15:44:50 -0500

"There are two separate issues/problems that are getting combined in this stream.

"- a check sum error occurred which the poll worker reset and continued counting the card "did not" require downloading before be reset. She never reran the previously counted ballots and this resulted in some negative PR post election. So that is Lana's primary question, how did this happen? Ken explanation sounds like a good one and will not require a line for VTS if we can ever get to GEMS.

"- the negative numbers on media display occurred when Lana attempted to reupload a card or duplicate card. Sophia and Tab may be able to shed some light here, keeping in mind that the boogie man may me reading our mail. Do we know how this could occur? "

NOTES
Sophia was the Diebold tech involved with the San Luis Obispo vote tally that appeared on the Internet five hours before poll closing.

Sophia is also the King County tech rep -- note the Ken Clark alter the audit log memo, talking about doing "end runs" around the voting system -- "King County is famous for it"

followup: possibility of "unauthorised source

Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 13:31:04 -0800

"John,

"Here is all the information I have about the 'negative' counts.

"Only the presidential totals were incorrect. All the other races the sum of the votes + under votes + blank votes = sum of ballots cast. The problem precinct had two memcory [sic] cards uploaded. The second one is the one I believe caused the problem. They were uploaded on the same port approx. 1 hour apart. As far as I know there should only have been one memory card uploaded. I asked you to check this out when the problem first occured but have not heard back as to whether this is true.

"When the precinct was cleared and re-uploaded (only one memory card as far as I know) everything was fine.

"Given that we transfer data in ascii form not binary and given the way the data was 'invalid' the error could not have occured during transmission. Therefore the error could only occur in one of four ways:

"Corrupt memory card. This is the most likely explaination for the problem but since I know nothing about the 'second' memory card I have no ability to confirm the probability of this.

"Invalid read from good memory card. This is unlikely since the candidates results for the race are not all read at the same time and the corruption was limited to a single race. There is a possiblilty that a section of the memory card was bad but since I do not know anything more about the 'second' memory card I cannot validate this.

"Corruption of memory, whether on the host or Accu-Vote

The problem is, no one looks at the paper ballots, even in a recount -- they just run them through the machines again.

In the Diebold memos is a fascinating bit about Volusia County. Diebold machines apparently gave Al Gore MINUS 16,022 votes. Just a glitch, said the news media.

Not quite -- the internal memos show that the programmers couldn't quite explain it, but what they DO know is that two different memory cards were uploaded, card #0 (correct totals) and one hour later, card #3 (all totals correct except for the presidential race). Card #3 has since been misplaced, darn it, no one can find it. And in the memos (triggered by a pesky Florida auditor, doggone those people) as they struggle to come up with a plausible explanation one of them cautions the others to be careful, "you never know when the boogie man is reading these."

You can find this memo and commentary on it at www.blackboxvoting.com and you can find a link to ALL the memos at the activism site, www.blackboxvoting.org

http://www.equalccw.com/dieboldtestnotes.html

Download it and look for yourself.

They admit it was real votes in the middle of the day. But if you want to see the specifics of why we knew it was real votes and the time stamp was accurate (it was not the FTP stamp, it was the file save date on a file inside a zip directory, backed up by dozens of automatic audit log items) -- and we knew it was not just that the clock was wrong because more votes appeared in the final tally.

Anyway, the details are here: Oooof! Proof?

The two-way modem info was simplistic, but all broadcast media that goes to general interest audiences is. They had that music on, going-going-going to commercial...but more importantly,

I knew that the two-way communications are possible because 1) I have seen the source code and it specifically enables read-write capabilities 2) I have installed the GEMS program and played with it 3) I have seen the user manuals, technical manuals, hardware manuals, installation instructions

Therefore, the information was accurate

As for left-wing journalist: Jim March, the person who found the files and posted the new Diebold stash for download, is a Republican/Libertarian gun activist. More on his point of view here: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/JimMarch2.htm

Cheers.

Bev

http://www.equalccw.com/dieboldtestnotes.html

Download it and look for yourself.

They admit it was real votes in the middle of the day. But if you want to see the specifics of why we knew it was real votes and the time stamp was accurate (it was not the FTP stamp, it was the file save date on a file inside a zip directory, backed up by dozens of automatic audit log items) -- and we knew it was not just that the clock was wrong because more votes appeared in the final tally.

Anyway, the details are here: Oooof! Proof?

The two-way modem info was simplistic, but all broadcast media that goes to general interest audiences is. They had that music on, going-going-going to commercial...but more importantly,

I knew that the two-way communications are possible because 1) I have seen the source code and it specifically enables read-write capabilities 2) I have installed the GEMS program and played with it 3) I have seen the user manuals, technical manuals, hardware manuals, installation instructions

Therefore, the information was accurate

As for left-wing journalist: Jim March, the person who found the files and posted the new Diebold stash for download, is a Republican/Libertarian gun activist. More on his point of view here: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/JimMarch2.htm

Cheers.

Bev

The biggest problem of all, for Diebold: They claim the Hopkins/Rice report which identified "stunning, stunning security flaws" was flawed because they have such bulletproof physical security around these machines.

Supposedly, only the county supervisor can access the carefully protected GEMS machine. Okay, if that's the case, and I spoke with the county supervisor today, and she says that neither she nor any of her staff put that GEMS file on the computer, and she admits that it has real votes in it --

Then who put it on the server? I'll tell you who it appears to be: The file had a password. The password was "sophia" and a Diebold employee named Sophia was at the San Luis Obispo elections office that day.

Wait a minute, though -- what happened to Diebold's bulletproof physical security argument? How did Sophia grab a gigantic file (you can download this file, here's a page with the link -- how did that file get from the safe and secure GEMS computer to the Diebold web site?

Oh yes, and the county supervisor told me her machine was not connected to the web.

Bev Harris

Add to that the ubiquitous "computer glitch" which seems to the the plausible deniability excuse of choice. Do a Lexis-Nexis search with the words "glitch" and "election" and you'll see that many elections have been miscounted by these machines, including many that flip the race to the wrong candidate, even when the contest is not particularly close.

Bev Harris
Black Box Voting
Gun activist posts the Diebold files on new download site: "Make My Day," he challenges the lawyers -- "You are cordially invited to bite me"

Same company is now doing electronic voter registration and now, electronic sign-in at the polling place.

I say, if I'm a crook: Find addresses of all those nursing homes (and old method, but much enhanced with the new electronic voter registration concept). Register all the bedridden geezers, electronically sign 'em in, and electronically stuff the ballot box.

Voting in America is going to trigger the next Boston Tea Party. Check this guy out: He just put a stash of new Diebold files on the web, and is daring Diebold to come and get him:

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/JimMarch2.htm

He says, "Diebold: I cordially invite you to bite me. Bring it on. Make my day."