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Virginia Begins to Worry About Voting Machines
nonsecurity writes "Remember the unheeded stories about possible fraud with new electronic voting machines? Well it seems that someone is finally now taking notice. The Commonwealth of Virginia has been ready to take the leap with electronic voting machines, which many experts say are wide open to potential voting fraud.
Like other jurisdictions, Virginia had been shrugging off the concerns. But the Washington Post is is now reporting that Johns Hopkins Computer Scientists have been studying the issue and have found that the machines might be easily hacked and election result tampering is a very real concern. And apparently Virginia is listening. With next year's elections promising to be full of fireworks, it's good to see that people are finally taking notice of the issue."
Why not simply anonimize the data but leave the potential for anyone and everyone to verify the results?
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
In a place where everyone and their dogs don't vote, what difference will it make if the results are screwed with???
Sounds alot like every other voting system.
My experience with poll workers is that they are serious and committed folks. But they are not the most savvy with computers and that may be the biggest security challenge.
Why not just install cheapo receipt printers into the voting machines and keep a paper tally that would be easily verifiable if need be. This would be good for an audit, and a statistically proper number of voting machines could be audited to insure valid electronic reporting. Although crude, a paper record is nice in it's resistance to tampering (at least electronically). At work we've got a dot matrix printer hooked to the door's ID card reader. There ain't no hacking that without physical access.
I'm pretty sure the parent of your post meant something similar to this method: you go vote very much the way you do now (by presenting your id and signing a sheet of paper)...then you assign your vote to a number (that is not associated with your name in any record) and you make those numbers public, so that you can check against them. I think this system is also good because you can check certain numbers (for example 10,354 voters showed up at this voting location, so there should have been exactly 10,354 vote numbers assigned)
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
I don't know why someone is trying to invent these anyway. What is wrong with an ATM system as a template? Send every voter an ATM card that is one vote in credit. Surely we view ATMs as secure?
Omnis amans amens
I dont know why they'd implement a vote DB using Microsoft Abcess. Still, if they REALLY wanted to, they could implement this system.
1: DB exists with basic vote rules.
2: User walks up to votebox.
3: Person hired to do polls check idetity (so that they can legitly vote)- enables 1 session for user
4: The votes are tallied by unsigned long int incrementation counter for each "Politican". Be aware, the machine knows exactly what this user votes for.
5: An MD5sum is made for the whole vote session, along with printing the md5 and votes cast on 1 small piece of paper.
6: The MD5 checksum is stored in concurrent use of the data.
Some people may think there's a security hazard in step 3-5 as the poll worker can probably see what the MD5sum might be. That could be solved by saying to the user 'press any key at random. this is NOT part of the vote"
Just an idea.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0308/S00014 .htm
Computer Voting Expert Ousted From Elections Conference
Lynn Landes
freelance journalist
www.EcoTalk.org
Denver CO Aug 1 - Dr. Rebecca Mercuri, a leading expert in voting machine security, had her conference credentials revoked by the president of the International Association of Clerks, Records, Election Officials, and Treasurers (IACREOT), Marianne Rickenbach. The annual IACREOT Conference and Trade Show, which showcases election systems to elections officials, is being held at the Adam's Mark Hotel in Denver all this week.
Mercuri believes that her credentials were revoked because of her position in favor of voter-verified paper ballots for computerized election systems. "I guess in a very troubling way it makes sense that an organization like IACREOT, that supports paperless computerized voting systems, which are secret by their very design, would not want computer experts who disagree with that position at their meetings."
Dr. Mercuri said that her credentials were approved for the first three days of the conference. She attended meetings of other groups and visited the exhibitors hall. But it was only on Thursday as she sat down to attend her first meeting at the IACREOT that President Marianne Rickenbach took Mercuri out of the room and told her that her credentials were being revoked. Rickenbach said that Mercuri had not filled out the forms correctly. Mercuri protested, but was refused reinstatement.
David Chaum, the inventor of eCash and a member of Mercuri's 'voter-verified paper ballot' group, had his credentials revoked on the first day of the conference. On the second day his credentials were partially restored. Chaum was allowed to visit the exhibitors hall, but not attend the IACREOT meetings.
Rickenbach was unavailable for comment as of this report. Mercuri can be reached at the Adam's Mark Hotel through Saturday.
" Rules are one thing, but when they change the intent of the electorate then something is wrong."
How do you determine intent? By actual votes, of course. Not stray marks on ballots, or bumped chads.
Where does it end? "I was disenfranchised. I intended to vote for Nader, but I never got out of the house on Election Day because I had to wait all day for the cable guy who missed his appointment. But I intended to vote for him!!!!"
Nothing is wrong with pen & paper. I entirely agree with you there. I think this electronic thing is simply stupid. What's the reason for it? You'll get the results faster. Whoa! Who cares.
When I lived in the Netherlands, I voted there for the European elections on an electronic machine. I hated it. It left me with a taste of unfinished business. In France, I voted with paper, then in the evening went back to sort and count the votes. It was fun and symbolic of democracy in action.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
All voting software and results should be subject to scrutany by the OSS community. All fraud is shallow when subjected to so many eyeballs.
By that logic, wouldn't it be better to abandon electronic voting and leave system as understandable and inspectable by all instead of small technological (programmers) or byrocratical elite?
... we have just to develop a better overall system of government selection. Based on credentials and the ability to serve? Based on ethics?
Perhaps just dump voting for people for voting on policy. With today's tech, there is no reason we couldn't have a system of government that let's everyone have direct say in policy and lawmaking.
Basically trade a system that doen't work for one that could... for a distributed government system, where voters make policy, instead of corrupt individuals influenced only by money and power.
1) Encrypt everything and place everything on a WAN that is not connected to the outside world.
2) Generate a unique/random PIN for each voter at the moment they walk into the polling station. Lock out that name/SSN from any further votes once a vote has been cast.
3) Utilize a small in-station camera that can be matched against a vote in case of alledged fraud.
While I know that item #3 will cause some privacy concerns, all image data could would be removed once the polling station closes.
Tux
Check out the great Linux PC I'm selling!
Anthony Papillion
Advanced Data Concepts, Inc.
"Quality Custom Software and IT Services"
Good idea, but I wonder how much those cards would go for on ebay. It'd be a good way to redistribute wealth down to the homeless, though.
Yep, unless you consider the odds of a payout being statistically heaped in favor of the house as "fraud resistant." Personally, I'd rather stick with the uncertainty of incompetence than have a company in charge of our electoral system whose mission is to rig thier machines.
Diebold fits the bill for the incompetence argument.
-- lk t lv ll th vwls t f wrds. T svs lts f tm t wrt bt ts pn n th ss t rd nd mks m lk lk cmplt dpsht.
Georgia Secreatary of States Position on H.R. 2239
Cathy asked that I pass on her message to you. Please do not hesitate to call if I or Cathy can be of any service.
Ann Rosenthal
Campaign Director
404-728-NNNN
Mx. Xxxxx,
Thank you for your e-mail regarding proposed H.R. 2239.
The passage of this legislation would be extremely damaging,
both to Georgia?s new electronic voting system and to those
which other states around the country are putting into
place. The legislation is based on a lack of understanding
of the operation of our machines and the software which
supports them. In fact, in discussing this legislation with
Congresswoman Denise Majette, I suggested that it should
more accurately be called the Voter Delay and Loss of
Integrity act.
After you touch the names of all candidates you wish to vote
for, the computer itself gives you a summary of your choices
and enables you to change those choices before you leave the
voting booth. That summary screen is the opportunity for
voters to verify their votes, and adding a paper receipt,
which presumably would be printed out while the voter waits,
would add delay (as printers are very susceptible to
breakdowns, paper and ink shortages, and other problems).
Additionally, after a paper receipt is printed, the voter
would have no ability to make further changes to their vote
without a very complicated adjustment to the voting machine,
which most poll workers would not be well-equipped to
accomplish. Additionally, placing a paper receipt into a
voting box or other instrument would add tremendous
potential for fraud, as pieces of paper have been known to
disappear from voting boxes in overnight and can otherwise
be very easily manipulated. Such ease of manipulation does
not exist with the new voting machines.
The second primary objection to the proposed legislation in
H.R. 2239 is that all software used in the voting machines
would be disclosed and available on the internet, which
would open up the integrity of our voting systems to every
interested hacker around the world. Once it is disclosed,
any hacker, any person interested in manipulating the
machines, would have access to all of the security built
into the software code and could then with ease manipulate a
state or county?s system if they could gain access to the
equipment. We have the source code available in a secure
escrow account, and our office can access it any time we
need to check the integrity of our systems. And each and
every unit used for voting in Georgia -- more than 22,000
individual units -- is individually submitted to logic and
accuracy testing before every election.
Please do not hesitate to contact me if I can answer any
additional questions on HR 2239
Cathy
Very true. The question, though, is how to set up effective, mass-scale, voting systems, because counting paper ballots is becoming increasingly difficult. Think what will happen in China and India as democracy develops further and more people vote: we're seriously talking about more than 800 million votes! That's a system that's doomed to break down. In a close election, stealing the race through electronic balloting isn't hard, but it is harder than bribing a couple local officials to change a 5 to a 6, or a 7 to a 4...
Web Design & Software Development
Because we Americans want it NOW. We want to see the results minutes, not days after the polls close.
The media feeds the hype by the forcasting the winners by use of exit polls, with scores of pundits discussing the ins and outs of every race. We have come to expect this and a move to return to paper ballots might dampen everyone's 'fun'. A paper ballot that could be reliable scanned, and non-refutable could work, but putting such a system in place has to run the gauntlet of every special interest group not to mention the politicians and government departments (Boards Of Elections) and workers who oversee such systems. (I worked county govt. IT for many years, and the BOE officials and workers were no more or less typical than any other govt. agency).
Make it cheap, reliable, difficult to defraud AND fast... then we have something to push hard for.
HC
...because ideas have consequences.
In January, 2002 the State Elections Board approved two closed source touch screen voting systems, the ES&S Votronic DRE and the GBS Accu-Touch EBS 100 DRE.
This spring I raised the system integrity issues with the Board, and persuaded them to revoke the certifications.
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
I agree with you though that paper's the only way to persist the voter's choice. If speed is so important, we can create a preliminary election result from electronic data. We can even do an automated machine count of the paper ballots. But we still need at least the ability to do a proper hand count of the paper ballots, at least until the technology for pure electronic voting is much more proven than it currently is.
The article mentions $3.9 billion that was appropriated by the Help America Vote bill, and that Virginia is spending $55 million on 11,000 voting machines, which works out to $5000 per machine. That seems a bit pricey for a computer with a touch screen, doesn't it?
I assume that the Help America Vote law leaves it up to the states to procure their machines how they see fit.
How much could it possibly cost for university researchers (like the ones at John's Hopkins) to write an open source system for voting that could run on commodity hardware?
Perhaps the government should take $10 million of that $3.9 billion, fund the research, and GPL the result. Let the code be vetted in public.
Am I missing something?
Hi. Most people talk about Florida not because of the ballot design or electoral college, but because of the way the Supreme Court went against almost all of its prior precedent and trumped state law in a state matter, based on an insignificant deadline that was arbitrarily set.
I didn't bring criminal convictions up but since you asked, Bush's DUI conviction in 1976 courtesy of the Smoking Gun. I don't personally think it is that big a deal but you seem sensitive on the subject.
It's ceratinly true that all major political candidates favor corporate welfare of one kind or another. (Though I do want to point out that the Clinton administration's stance on trade was far more market oriented than the pandering of the Bush administration. Look at steel tariffs.) Bush was unusual in that he personally profited from corporate welfare.
"Self-righteous" is definitely an eye-of-the-beholder thing.
The Clinton recession? That's good. Clinton certainly benefitted from a strong economy while he was at the helm. And a downturn of some sort was inevitable. But he did the most important thing: he didn't derail the economy. The Bush tax cuts, which Bush claims is a "jobs stimulus", have created nothing but defecits as far as the eye can see while the economy sheds tens of thousands of jobs each month.
There was fraud in the election. The Bush team pressured Florida election boards to count invalid absentee ballots. But even with it, under every plausible recount scenario (with the hugely ironic exception of the one favored by the Gore team), Gore received more votes in Florida than Bush.
Q:How many libertarians does it take to stop a Panzer division? A:None. Obviously market forces will take care of it.
You misunderstand.
I don't want to generate paper for the vote counters. That'd be a step backward from our mechanical registers. I want *something* -- scribble it on a diskette, store it in a smart card, print an encrypted packet on paper, whatever -- that *I take away with me*, independent of how the machine reports votes to the tally office. Something that can be compared, unambiguously and as many times as necessary, with the official records so that disputes can be resolved.
It won't do much for the total, since a lot of people would either not bother or not be able to justify the expense of the medium, but it would help those who do use it to feel secure that their individual votes were accurately recorded, which a system carried out largely by invisible means makes very difficult. I trust the mechanical system because every aspect of its operation is observed and tested by several people with divergent interest in the results, and they (theoretically) keep each other, and the system, mostly honest. How are they gonna do that with a system which cannot be observed?
I must agree that the punch card system used in Florida was, um, lacking both in security and in user-interface best practices. In fact, if I were asked to design a system to cause the maximum amount of confusion and miscounting, I can imagine nothing "better" than a manual punch card system.