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."

Comments

Solution

[swordboy]

Why not simply anonimize the data but leave the potential for anyone and everyone to verify the results?

Re:Solution

[tetra103]

I read that artical, but what the author doesn't admit to is that paper ballots are just as suspect as a computer ballot.

He does key on one aspect and that is banking vs voting. Computer banking works because transactions can be traced. Because you can't track a computer vote is why it won't work. But think of it, you can't track an anonymous vote whether it's computerized or not. So in it's current form, the voting system we have/use is broken and always was.

I suppose you could implement the concept of a vote reciept. Say you register and you cast a vote, then you recieve a reciept with a transaction number (ie: vote record). At any point, you should be able to use that transaction number to verify your vote. That may work for individuals having a piece of mind in casting a ballot, but there would still be a void when trying to vallidate an election. The problem centers around the "anonymous" vote. No matter how a system is designed, once the ballot becomes anonymous, you loose all tracking ability and hence leaves a large hole for hacking or rigging an election. This has nothing to do with computers mind you. It's just the nature of performing an anonymous transaction. Encryption doesn't help. The flaw is in the transaction design, not it's implementation.

High Level of Human Intervention Required

[BinaryOne]

NPR just did a story on this. The issue with the system is that there are a number of security steps that the poll workers are required to follow. Failure to follow all the steps exactly as prescribed will open the system to fraud.

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.

paper receipt tape

[mwilliamson]

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.

what are you talking about?

[TrekkieGod]

The "data" is anonymous now. It's possible to tell who voted and where, but not which person you voted for (which is the meaningful data). The votes are secret to prevent abuse of the type that existed before they were secret (employers telling employees to vote for a certain candidate or lose their jobs, etc.)

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)

Re:Stupid Question

[danormsby]

I completely agree.

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?

Computer Voting Expert Ousted From Elections Confe

[aethelferth]

Mercuri's page on e-voting problems: http://www.notablesoftware.com/evote.html

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.

Re:Stupid Question

[Queuetue]

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.

Momma always said 'Stupid is as Stupid does'

[oldstrat]

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

Wisconsin has already decertified touchscreens

[bmasel]

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.

Re:You gotta have the paper...

[ojQj]

One important advantage of electronic voting is the ability to eliminate option order advantages. All other things being equal, people have a statistically significant tendency towards choosing certain positions from a ballot. Electronic voting can present the options in a different order for each voter to eliminate the psychological effect of option position.

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.