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Seeking The Source For Ireland's E-Voting System
WeeBull writes "Michael Cunningham from p45.net tried to request 'the source code of the electronic voting system first used in Ireland's May 2002 general election, plus any supporting technical documentation supplied to the Department of Environment and Local Government including the functional specifications' under Ireland's Freedom of Information legislation. The result wasn't what he expected ..."
Apparently there were several audits performed and I believe the source was available under NDA to the govt. Next time they will be entitled to distribute the source if they so desire.
this was the govt's response to a series of questions in the Dail
Security and integrity have been paramount in the design, testing and implementation of the electronic voting and counting system. Original tender submissions were assessed and the successful solution selected on the basis of, inter alia, functionality and product quality including hardware and software security and application of the count rules as in the case of a paper ballot. Detailed functional specifications, likewise, made extensive reference to security aspects of the system. The testing programme has been thorough and involved independent examination of the voting machine and voting machine software by a number of recognised international test institutes and private companies. The voting machine hardware and software has been tested by PTB, the National Institute for Science and Technology in Germany. Separate reports have been prepared by two test institutes in the Netherlands: TNO subjected the voting machine to a range of environmental tests and KEMA Quality BV tested the machine for compliance with international safety standards. An Irish company, PMI Software Ltd. carried out an architectural and code review of the system software. My Department also engaged the Electoral Reform Society in the UK, which has extensive experience of STV election counts, to test the software against its database of over 300 elections. The count software was, in addition, tested for functionality and accuracy both by my Department and a number of Dáil returning officers. Finally, in relation to vote counting, the system can produce, after the votes are mixed, vote tables to enable progress of the count to be monitored and also to trace a vote at any stage of the count. If necessary, following a High Court order in an election petition case, the system can also produce a ballot paper, with preferences, to allow a manual count to be carried out. At the general election and referendum pilots in 2002, the software was used under license from the supplier and at present, the source code is not available to the public. The software is currently being modified for use at the European and local elections in June 2004 and when this work has been completed and tested, I will give careful consideration to the making of the source code available. The Zerflow report, which was the subject of recent media reporting, was commissioned by my Department as an addition to the principal reports to which I have referred. The company was requested to carry out a security assessment of the procedures to be applied in the use of voting machines in polling stations to ensure that procedures proposed by the Department were adequate. The issues raised by the Zerflow report, which dealt mainly with possible threats to the external physical features of the voting machine, were assessed by my Department and by Nedap/Powervote - the machine manufacturers. The assessment by both was that the main scenario identified was implausible and that the likelihood of its occurrence without detection was extremely remote. I should emphasise that the version of the voting machine used in this country has more security features than the versions used in the Netherlands and Germany where the issues raised by Zerflow have not been identified in any risk assessments. In addition, the integrity of the Irish voting process is protected on polling day by a set of protocols operated by polling staff and the Gardai under the supervision of the returning officer. My Department will continue to keep these arrangements under review and will update advice provided to returning officers, as necessary, including advice in relation to the presence of audio, video or
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
According to the minutes of the selection committe. "The company will provide a large screen machine that has been used in the Netherlands and in Cologne and Düsseldorf in Germany."
So looks like its already in use in Germany dude...sorry
I know you were kidding, but for the sake of the people who haven't read the article (yet) - I know I was annoyed the Slashdot article ends without actually saying what this is about.
What he expected was that a) the government would hand over the source code or b) the government would find some excuse (e.g. security through obscurity) to not reveal the source. Well, it turns out the government doesn't have the source code: "The source code is held by the Nedap/Powervote [sic] and is not available in the Department of the Environment and Local Government."
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
Bev Harris' site http://www.blackboxvoting.com/ has a whole lot of info on this. She's done some excellent work tracking the various aspects and dangers of closed source voting machines and their partisan private manufacturers.
Secret Group Manipulates Vote Machines - The widespread use of electronic voting machines has severely undermined the integrity of elections in the United States. Behind the companies that make the voting machines is a small and secretive group of men, including a well-known U.S. senator.
Voting machine companies: Ownership disclosure, "private" vote-counting codes, potential for manipulation - This is an article about just three things: disclosure, conflict of interest and potential for manipulation. It is not a conspiracy theory or a political point of view. I think you'll agree with me: We don't care who wins the election, as long as it's who was VOTED FOR.
Senator Hagel campaign treasurer owns voting machine co. - Election Systems & Software, the firm whose machines were involved in the 2002 flubbed Florida primary election(4)-- and the recent huge flub in Dallas, where early voting had to be shut down when machines kept registering Democratic votes as Republican (See the 31 mistakes link, top of page) and the company that now makes the voting machines for most of America--is a private company that does not like to tell the public who owns it.
During last weeks general election here in .be, 44% of the people voted on a PC.
All registered polical parties participating in the elections, could appoint a few experts who were granted access to the source code of the program that was used...
In 1991 nobody except private company had the code.
In 1999 official expert asked for the state to own the code and suggest publishing it.
In 2000 they published partial code and documentation with most important security part removed.
In May 2003 they published full code (but no doc) of new system (AES added).
Feel free to download analyse and report problem to us
We have no way to check if that code was really in use. Because they use the same floppy disk to boot the system and to save the result, we have no way to make sure what was on the floppy at the begining of the election day. This is explained here but only in french.
But having the code is not enough... actually Richard Stallman had something to say about Free Software not being enough.
Now if you are Belgian and unhappy about the status of our election system, you can join or contact PourEVA.
I personally believe that if we want to reduce the repetitive task of counting the ballot, we could use optical scanning (and make test manual recount). But we should never put a computer between our vote and the expression of our vote. Paper and Pen rules.
Don't let the computer/expert control the election. Information for Belgium in french: http://www.poureva.be/
The NSDAP got 30 per cent or so in the last Reichstags election. Unfortunately there wasn't any candidate left to be chancelor. Everyone capable already tried and messed up. So Hindenburg, the Reichspresident (who was too old to get anything straight any more) chose Hitler as chancelor, as he thought Hitler would proof that he is not capable either and so the NSDAP would vanish.
A few weeks later, the NSDAP got the Ermächtigungsgesetz (authorization bill) through the Reichstag: The parliament decided to turn all power to Hitler and to shut down/impeach the complete parliament. The completely flawed constitution of the Weimar Republic allowed that. Of course the NSDAP had only a third of the seats in parliamant. But the SA marched up in front of the parliamant and did not let social democrats, communists, etc into the parliamant (some of them were already arrested by then).
So, yes, 30 per cent of the germans elected Hitler. But he only got to power because he did the trick with the Ermächtigungsgesetz. The problem with germany was that far to few germans did anything against that coup. Most of them wanted a better economy (a really lot of people where without a job) and wanted Hitler to do "something against hte jews" (not really kill them, but teach them a lesson, or so).
The Bush election is completely different. Sure, the voting election, the Supreme Court and the whole voting system was completely flawed. But Bush did not proactively participate in a coup like Hilter. Further you cannot compare the intensions of Bush and Hitler at all. And after all - I do not think Bush will have such a huge impact on history as Hitler.
Hm, i did my last voting in dortmund (germany). It's not done with paper&pencil there anymore, but it's a digital voting system by now. And i found my voting experience slightly interesting:
There were two people in the row before me and both were having problems using the new system. Maybe it's the panic of computer-illerate people which does arise as soon as they are put in front of a screen. The first person did just seem to be unsure with the instructions and needed several questions to the voting observers until she was sure enough which buttons she should press. The next one had accidently pressed the wrong button and tried to correct it (you could hear the beeps whenever someone pressed a button - don't worry, they all did sound the same so you could not find out by the sound what they did vote). The vote observes automatically started to give him hints in voice which made clear that they had to do this the whole day.
I've asked them if a lot people have problems with this voting system and they agreed, that they had to help out people the whole day. So while the counting of the voices is eased a lot the voting itself seemed to be a lot more difficult for some people (actually i found it quite easy, but maybe it's because i'm used to computers). Out of curiosity i also asked what would happen to the votes if someone would switch-off the power, they laughed but didn't know what would be the result (i guess it's saved in flash or something like what - but i still can't tell you for sure).
And i also still do not know what happens to my vote inside the machine, it's guaranteed that you can check afterward the number of voters with the number of votes which were made (because every voter is also registered by giving a piece of paper to the observers, so the voters can be counted afterwards), but the source of the machine (not just code but also how the mechanics do work) should absolutly be open in a democracie!
The liberal media has been heavily documented as any google search will show. Also the democrats are the biggest cheats since Kennedy and before, and of course Clinton.
I suppose more details of the electoral system are in order...
:-)
For General Elections (to the Dail - main parliment) Ireland has a multiseat-Proportional Representaion election system - meaning there are more than one seats available in each constituency.
Firstly each voter can vote in order of preference for every candidate - For example say there are 10 candidates for three seats (my case last election) You can vote in order of 1 to 10.
PR works by counting first how many ballots are cast, dividing by some ammount (IIRC Number of seats + 1). This is set as the "quota". Then counting takes place. Once a candiate reaches the quota they are deemed elected. Then the amount of votes over the quota is distributed to the other candates, going on the next choice of the voters concerned.
If no one reaches the quota, the person(s) with the least votes accrued currently are eliminated, and their votes are distributed to the remaining candidates.
This is a complicated system and electronic counting would be an advantage - sometimes it can take up to a week to recount a constituncy, last time there were three recounts in one case, with the final seat going to the candidate with three more votes than the other!
Electronic voting was used last time in three places, with the results out the night of the election, rather than a day or two later. This lead to some problems when a sitting TD (equiv MP) lost her seat, and was told rather cruely, normally you get the results of each count so you are prepared for the result, long in advance of the declaration.
In my opinion, ideally Electronic voting is the way to go. However I don't trust the machines or the companies who make them, regardless of the published nature of the code. It would be very difficult to catch fraud taking place, and personally I like the current method (pen and paper). It is very satisifing putting a 10 beside the candidate who you hate
tom.
With regards the voting in public...There are specific provisions in Irish law that means that any interested party is allowed and to be fully facilitated in the inspection of the entire voting process, to which there interest pertains. For the proposes of this law this means A candidate or his election agents, and he may only inspect the process in the constituency that he is interested in.
Just before the last general election, I mentioned this to a party worker of the then Attorney General (he is now minister for justice), and was brushed aside. I also mentioned this to a friend of mine who is a labour party activist and normally acts as an election agent for some prominent TD's. He was more interested but when he queried HQ he was brushed aside.
So the solution is this, run as a TD or councillor (or president), and then demand the source code before counting proceeds. If you don't get it bring them to the high court. I know of a few barristers who are very unhappy with e-voting, for constitutional reasons, who could help you out.
By the way, currently many smaller parties run candidates in areas the know they will lose in simply to inspect the voting process. This is so they can gain data as to what areas are voting for what party, What the spoiled votes are saying etc.
JJ
However, Job Bush systematcially attempted to 'cleanse' the voting lists, in direct contradiction of a court order (See page 34 of The Best Deomocracy Money Can Buy, by Greg Palast). There are at least 40,000 ex-felons that are allowed to vote in Florida, so this is not an insignificant number, given that the election results were so close.
But there were some amaizingly slopply errors in the 'data cleaning'. For example, the state of Texas supplied a list of 8,000 convicts that were not eligilble to vote. The company overseeing the error, ChoicePoint DBT, called this a simple data error. However, the list was for misdimeanor convictions, so the people on this liste were eligible to vote. In fact after a 1997 law, even convicted felons in Texas are eligible to vote after doing their time. There were similar irrgularities for convicts from other states (Ohio, Illinois)
Standing up for the rights of 'criminals' may not be popular, but they do have rights and when one person's rights are denied, the rights of all are attacked. This too is not a abstract concept. One of the 'felons' on the Florida purge list was a Thomas Cooper, who was 'convicted' in 2007. There is also a Jonny Jackson, Jr., who was purged from the list because of a felon conviction by a John Fitzgerald Jackson. The voter lists were not verifed with the dilligance given a Visa card application.
Think global, act loco
"However, Job Bush systematcially attempted to 'cleanse' the voting lists"
This "cleansing" system was actually put in place by Florida Democrats, not Jeb Bush.
Thank you for not mentioning the common lie of "cleansing black voters": the cleansing of the lists did not take race into consideration.
See Greg Palast's site http://gregpalast.com/ It's in his book and you can download the relevant chapter CHAPTER 1. JIM CROW IN CYBERSPACE: The Unreported Story of How They Fixed the Vote in Florida at http://www.gregpalast.com/bestdemocracymoneycanbuy chapter1.pdf
His conclusions? The polititions are lining up to do the same for the 2004 elections, and there's little you can do about it.
They use a similar system in the Da'il (our Parliament) and the counting PC got SQL Slammer, because they'd left it on the Internet-connected network.
Of course, this should have rendered any vote counted while the machine was on the network null and void, but the media dropped the ball and the opposition parties weren't IT-savvy enough to realise what a big deal they could have made of it.
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.