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Electronic Voting: Your Worst Nightmares are True
jfreon writes "On Democracy Now Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting fame, disclosed (near the end of the transcript) that in the compromised 1.8Gigs off Diebold's FTP site they uncovered "an actual election file containing actual votes on election day from San Luis Obispo County, California". Problem is, the date stamp was 3:31pm - during voting hours! The Diebold system uses a wireless network card. Worse: "So that means if they can pull the information in, they can also send information back into those machines. ""
This needs to make mainstream press, and DAMN QUICK.
Does those voting data also tie person with vote? In other words can you "just" rig the election, or can you also keep a full database of people's voting habits?
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
It really doesn't matter WHAT type of system we use - be it paper or electronic - it's how much thought and time we take in designing these ballots. It's perfectly possible to have an easy, user-friendly chad system as it is to have an obtuse and confusing electronic system - and vice versa. Sure, the general public is stupid - but it's not like this is a new problem; we've been designing for stupidity for decades (centuries?)
Is it too much to hope that our public officials will realize the potential for corruption, fix it (though any of the possible ideas which have been suggested on /.) and move on?
True, paper and pen ballots are vulnerable to tampering and etc, but at least you can recount the ORIGINAL ballots as the voters filled them out. Electronic ballots lack such a safeguard. Unless of course we print out a paper-copy of the ballots to keep in a lock-box just in case the voting procedures are called into question. But then why not just use paper ballots in the first place??
"So that means if they can pull the information in, they can also send information back into those machines. ""
Mod me down, because I am obviously too dumb to realize that just because the data from a machine makes it onto a server, does NOT mean that you can push data back.
You think, maybe, the voting machine pushes its data to a repository and defined intervals? Maybe? kinda?
teknopurge
I've read elsewhere that is it illegal to count votes before the polls close. Would this constitute such a breach?
Even more interesting is that Diebold would MAKE MORE MONEY if they sold voting machines with add-on printers so you could deposit a paper record of your vote in a separate ballot box! However, Diebold - and the other voting machines companies that happen to be owned by Republicans - OPPOSE this!
Additional revenue from add-on sales like this - and the service contracts that would go with it - are immensely profitable.
So what is going on here?
Also, they insult and ridicule anyone who tries to point out that electronic voting machines that cannot be audited are a problem! Even the hundreds of computer scientists who have spoken out are told they don't know what they are talking about. What IS going on here?
What would be so difficult about adding a printer, and having the voter look over the printout and then deposit it into a separate ballot box? Why are they so dead-set against doing this, even when it would make them tons more money? Are these Republican-owned "businesses" after something besides money?
This does not surprise me.
The only way people are going to get a wakeup call is if a group of people got a database of eligible voters from local precincts complete with whatever data is necessary to fake a ballot, go into said precincts, and make it look like some unknown Non-Democrat/Non-Republican party candidates (who wouldn't have won anyways) won the election.
Alternately, it would humor me if some "terrorist" organization used this hole to severely screw up the vote by mass-wiping voting terminals/databases.
BTW: How would someone catch this before it's too late? Most precinct staff are volunteers, and they definitely can't see who voted what...
It's worse than you think. Election Systems and Software, the company that builds, owns and largely runs many of the voting machines used in the US (and 80% of those used in Nebraska) was at one time headed and is still partially owned by Chuck Hagel, Republican Senator from Nebraska - who, surprisingly, won unprecedented victories in his state against an incumbent Democrat governor, winning by the largest landslide ever and taking the majority among demographics that had never voted Republican in the past.Hagel had avoided reporting his ownership, and then the whole trail started to come out into the open. It also turns out that Election Systems and Software was heavily funded by the conservative Christian fundamentalist Ahmanson family.
Do you think that a) the electorate is capable of electing anyone based on intelligent principles, b) that there is actually a choice between any major (even Green) candidate, and c) that we even achieve a simple plurality in elections anyway?
The end result is that we have a minority group of undereducated voters picking between Candidate Number 1 and Candidate Number 1. Where's the practical democracy there? The Libertarians will argue that its all good because at least we willingly choose to be run by an elected, and in some cases, hereditary elite. But if you're using the US as a yardstick for the implementation of democracy (or even capitalism, but thats a whole other story), then you're living under a rock.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I hate to spoil a conspiracy theory, but maybe they don't like the implication that their machine might be flawed. It's like Oracle telling their customers to also keep a dead-tree cardbox system in parallel *just to be sure*
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
How often do you use touch screens in real installations? Most of them are at an odd angle, so that parallax between the sensing surface (outside of glass) and image surface (inside of glass) means the computer reads your touch as being significantly higher than it looks like it should be. I see other people struggling with this all the time; to make matters worse when it doesn't respond to their initial touch (because they "missed" the button) they think they have to push harder, mashing the contact area into a big blob that's even less accurate. Most touch screens are horribly designed.
Honestly, it would be good to have hackers...and I mean real good hackers, not script kiddies, change the results of a large election to a party like one of the above just to show the real danger to having machines like this wide open.
While I don't normally advocate the breaking of laws (and I love white hat hacking), something dramatic does need to happen to wake some ordinary people up. Of course, this isn't really all that different from the 100,000 dead people who voted for JFK in 1960, but who is counting.
I know of a case where numerous wintel-based ATM's got compromised by Nachi because they were years behind in patches. The vendor responsible for the ATM's? Diebold. Sounds like the confidentiality & integrity of any data within this corporation should be called into question. [For confidentiality purposes I can't name my source. It didn't make the news that I know of so I can't provide a link. Sorry.]
akad0nric0
This sentence no verb.
Ok. How about this for verification:
(A) Vote (using some electronic voting machine)
(B) Get an on-screen summary of your 'VOTES' after you've completed and get the chance to OK.
(C) Once OKd, get a print out of same in both plain text and machine-readable bar codes
(D) Make final OK to record vote (Paper matches screen)
(E) Drop the print out in a 'ballot box'
Vote counting would consist of the voting machines doing a semi-instant count. Further validation would be taking those hard-printed receipts to a non-networked tally machine.
Check the results from both. Do they match? If not, use the paper tallied results as those would have been validated by the voter as being accurate.
But really, it doesn't require much more than an IQ of 70 to learn how to use a punch-card ballot -- AND make sure the chads are completely removed...
Well, it's not a matter of blaming it on Republicans, but on a group of very far-right types who not only are trying to hijack the Republican party, but are trying to silence people (like Bev Harris) who report on this.
Reason Magazine, by no means a liberal nor hysterical magazine, seems to have no compunctions about identifying this as a problem with roots in the right.
If the guy ran a voting machine company, and the voting machine company made machines that can't be audited, and then we found on that company's website that they were illegally obtaining data DURING an election...
And if the company - even though it would MAKE MORE MONEY - refused to make an add-on printer so a ballot could be printed, examined by the voter, and put in a separate ballot box for counting to verify that the machine correctly reported the totals...
Well, I might not be convinced he was going to cheat, but I sure wouldn't want to trust an election to his machines.
Remember, with these machines there is NO WAY to know if the machine correctly reported the vote.
SOME of us here work with computers, so we know that sometimes the computers make mistakes. So wouldn't it be a good thing if we had a way to verify what a machine reported?
What if a machine just broke down? Do we hold the election over again, or do we throw out all the votes from that precinct?
This is just a feature that allows anyone who wanted to run for govenor make the process even worse by illegally cheating. This feature will probably get removed because illegal cheating is cheap, while legal cheating is expensive.
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DON'T USE TUNAREZ!!!
A corrupt presidential candidate who is poised to lose an election suddenly wins when his corrupt brother, who happens to be a governor of a very populous state, "loses" thousands of votes, tipping the election in favor of his brother. the entire world knows about it, yet the corrupt presidential candidate is allowed to take office.
Oh wait...
Maybe the powers that be fear people will demand true participatory democracy when they see the power of electronic voting. If it were made easy and secure, people could vote directly on the issues that effect them, rather than employing politicians look after their interests. I live in California, and yes, ballot initiatives have lead to some wacky laws, but not nearly as many as politicians themselves have made. I don't buy the argument against direct democracy: that voters can't be trusted to lead the country. If people can't be trusted to lead themselves, how can leaders be trusted to do it? Kang and Kodos notwithstanding, aren't politicians people too? By scaring everyone into believing that electronic voting is inherantly insecure, people will never embrace a technology that could give them more direct control over their government. /me removes tinfoil hat.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Diebold's SEC filings show their Chairman / President / CEO to be Mr. Walden W. O'Dell, who has donated $2000 this summer to Senator George V. Voinovich, Republican from Ohio (Diebold's home state). Diebold Inc.'s soft money donations also go to Republicans.
This does not demonstrate to me much evidence that Diebold is "after something other than money", it looks like routine political activity to me. But, while my quick research has neither managed to refute nor confirm your conspiracy theory, I'll pass it along anyway for whoever might be curious.
If they have electronic voting, demand a ballot and don't go away until you get one. Make sure to make a scene and talk loudly about how you heard the machines were insecure on slashdot and how the situation in Nebraska is fishy and how you won't use the machines becuase they are rigged. If you can get a mob together to go and screw up the machines beforehand, that'd be better.
Seriously, I'v had my fill between corperations and the goverment. When I goto vote next election, if they have electronic machines made by any of these fishy companies with no paper trail, I'm getting a chainsaw and spraypainging "democracy" on the sides, throwing on a nasty nasty chain, hiding it in a trombone case, getting in a buisness suit so I look like a hurried musician, and when I get in the building, I'll start the puppy up in the bathroom or some consealed area, run out screaming "You want democracy, I'll give you democracy!!! Lets do this by paper!" and rip the machines to hell.
Do I care about the prison time? The better question is, what jury on earth is going to convict me? >:) Especially if I proove that my motives were justifyable, there's something fishy going on and the goverment is bieng fishy, denied me a printout of my vote and ballot, and make it a point to tell the jury they don't have to convict me. Plus, I'll make national news for sure, a psycho running into a voting area with a chainsaw and ripping all of the boxes to shreds? You'd bet that it'd get all over the god box.
Sure, I'll take it up the ass a few years in jail and have a felony conviction to ensure that the voting system isn't rigged. Besides, I'm sure it'll look GREAT on a resume!
Candy-Coated Knowledge
Similarly, car salesman never try to push rust-coating, interior protection, or any sort of warranty, because the consumer will then believe that the car is flawed.
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.
From Ensuring the Integrity of Electronic Voting:
The integrity of electronic voting in public general elections with secret ballots can be ensured only if the following precautions are taken:
* generate and use paper ballots
* use open computer architecture and open-source software
* prohibit online voting in general elections (except in rare cases)
I watch Brit Hume on Fox News
FTP Timestamps are added by the FTP server. the FTP protocol only transfers the contents of the file, and then recreates that file in the native file system. since file modification dates are /not/ part of a file, but part of the file system, this information is NOT PART OF A FILE DURING FTP TRANSFER
this means that whoever put the file there, put it there during the daytime. it doesn't mean the file was transferred off a voting system during the daytime.
that said, i still have concerns about voting machines with a wireless interface.
In case anyone is interested, a more academic (footnoted, reseached by an actual historian) account and analysis of American Fascism is available http://www.cursor.org/stories/fascismintroduction
Please read this article and tell others about it if you care at all about where this country is headed.
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
What if a several different websites are thrown up, and on election day the people working the polls can tell the voters to go online at home and verify their vote. What website you go to can be determined by what region you live in. Now I know that online polls are not reliable, but if a several different websites where created all with a different polling system, that would make it extremely difficult to hack every system so that the results would be consistent. If any of the online poll results are significantly different it would be time to start asking question.
Win a signed Stephen Carpenter ESP Guitar from the Deftones: http://def-tag.com/?r=0008781
You need to study your Constitutional law a bit more closely.
For about 80 years after the adoption of the Constitution you're correct in your claim that state governments were not bound by the restrictions imposed by the federal Constitution in the Bill of Rights. Indeed, many states had state Constitutions that openly defied the federal BOR, e.g., I believe that the Georgia constitution required all office holders to be "Christians in good standing" (whatever that means).
But then there was a minor spat over exactly what the Constitution actually meant and who it actually applied to... and ever since the end of the Civil War there's been unanimous concensus that the federal BOR applies to ALL levels of government. It doesn't matter if the Alabama state constitution allows a judge to erect a 20' statute of a burning Buddha in his courtroom, the federal constitution prohibits such displays under the 'establishment' clause.
More generally, I find this argument and the judge's argument VERY disturbing because they seem to be rolling back the clock to the days where whites were kings and blacks were out in the fields picking cotton. Nowhere in the Ten Commandments is there any prohibition on slavery. Nowhere in the Bible is there any prohibition on slavery - in fact the Bible often mentions God's chosen people having slaves. If God's laws supercedes the US Constitution, does that mean that the constitutional ban on slavery is unenforceable?
I hasten to add that I have no reason to believe that the OP believes this. I find it very possible that he came across a site that seemed to make a persuasive argument and didn't realize how much was omitted. But I am beginning to wonder if there's an organized group behind this that wants to roll back civil rights.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
People who want more and more power aren't in general Democrats (though times are changing). Democracy is about the dispersion of power and influence.
The $300 million dollar campaign of George Bush was about SOMETHING. They didn't make that cash by having $10 per plate barbecues. They got that money from coporate fat cats.
By the way, you don't get to be a super-corporate fat cat by being fair to your fellow employee and fellow citizen. You get to those positions by well placed daggers (proverbial) in the backs of your peers and the occasional supervisor (when you can manage it). You get to that place by selling as much as you can for as much as you can for the smallest cost (which means it's often shit). You get to that position by laying of workers, slashing benefits, importing foreign identured servants, busting unions and all around just being plain evil.
After a full day of wholesale theft, who do you turn to protect your bounty. Do you turn to Democrats who (used to) believe in a fair society by which you pay for public services according to your means. Those same democrats often provide low-cost or no-charge services that compete with your schemes to fleece every dime possible. Those damn democrats and progressives try very hard to keep large corporations from selling $1,000 toilet seats to the Pentagon.
Or do I give money to Republicans. Not honest ones (though there are few remaining). Rather, do they give money to the neo-cons who have now publicly stated their goal to merge large corporate America and government. Corporate governance (formerly called Facism). If I give them lots of money, they will slash those pesky environmental laws that stop us from dumping toxic waste in rivers. They will allow us to rape the landspace AND WORKERS. They will turn aside when we fleece Americans. They will overturn liability and tort laws by which consumers sue us for selling them faulty dangerous products.
Hmmm... if I'm a greedy evil rat bastard with a contempt for humanity, who do I choose to donate to. Well at $300 million to $30 million, I dare-say that the evil rat bastards have chosen the neo-cons.
Now the rat-bastards are finding ways to dispense with the even more troublesome DEMOCRACY. Voters will get pissed off. After all, once upon a time their was a robber barons paradise that but dangerous chemicals into the milk itself. Then their was a great depression and many of those who counted themselves among the elite few were cannabalized by their superiors. Sent out to the bread lines by the common rabble. But the common rabble could still vote. And they voted for an Roosevelt.
My gosh, didn't that Roosevelt's cousin also pass the first anti-trust legislation. Isn't that they war hero who led a rebellion against the elitist Republican party and subsequently crushed as a progressive. Didn't those victorious Republicans lead us to our paradise of an enslaved population. Damn what will this Roosevelt do????
Of course, Roosevelt brought about the new Deal. Eventually embraced by most (including the Grand Old Party) up and until Eisenhower. The last great Republican warned us upon departure of the Miliatary-Industrial complex and other such corporate mischief. Against he pursuit of war and strife for the benefit of a few fat cats. The same Business-Government environment that brought Adolf Hitler to power and the world to the brink of utter disaster.
Now we sit with a government being literally run by the corporat thiefs. They are governed by a president unelected by the people (like Adolf Hitler). He is determined to de-regulate EVERYTHING. To diminish the people great institution DEMOCRACY to a sham game. Adolf Hitler never stopped elections. And he never stopped winning.
Here and now the Neo-Cons (Facists) are trying to permanently rob America of democracy without robbing us of elections. They fix them through culling voting rolls of so-called "felons" and fix the voting machines to vote a Neo-Con every
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
The people who cast the votes don't decide an election, the people who count the votes do.
conservativism (limited government)
First of all, conservatism (in the present day usage) has nothing to do with the size of the government and everything to do with the extent that the government interferes in private business matters.
Second, the current "conservative" government of the United States has increased the size of our government and increased government spending, even if you eliminate the costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Most of this spending increase is going to domestic intelligence gathering ("homeland security"), which, if I am understand correctly, means spying on American citizens, invading thier privacy, and interfereing in thier personal affairs.
Thirdly, I'd never be so stupid as to think that the current leaders of the Republican party would understand what Conservatism meant to an actual conservative.
dipshit.
Read, L
Although one can deduce from fascist language implicit Social Darwinist assumptions about human nature, the need for community and authority in human society, and the destiny of nations in history, fascism does not base its claims to validity on their truth. Fascists despise thought and reason, abandon intellectual positions casually, and cast aside many intellectual fellow-travelers. They subordinate thought and reason not to faith, as did the traditional Right, but to the promptings of the blood and the historic destiny of the group. Their only moral yardstick is the prowess of the race, of the nation, of the community. They claim legitimacy by no universal standard except a Darwinian triumph of the strongest community.
This sounds like a pretty good description of a neo-conservative. I'm pretty sure the "F" word is right on. Note, I'm not saying all Republican's are neo-cons. Rather that the party has been high-jacked by Neo-Cons.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
All things being equal (they aren't), Bush has done enough damage and the press is bold enough with him that he cannot win relection without: it being handed to him by a blunder of an idiot opponent, or if he steals it through fraud.
We are going into the economic winter of an inevitable Kondratieff Cycledelayed by massive deficit spending. Whatever party wins the next election will take the blame for this.
Based on the momentem of electronic voter machine replacment and the detailed widespread press coverage of the hanging/dimpled chad recount process, if the presidential election is in within 0-5% there will be great hubbub and sevral recounts.
Bush will become president again after recounts play out. The media will be forced to cover the advantages of open source vs proprietary software. It's to short a logical leap for the press not to take.
Durring the mayhem and finger pointing US companies that make software will become the biggest boogie men in the questionable election. Rigged or not, the mistrust of the govt will be enourmous. The stigma will linger and people will understand the software/IP alternitive en-masse for the first time.
When the market/housing/bonds/currency all crash, because the chinese unpeg the yuan from the dollar as late as possible (2007 3/4 as per the WTO) and the yuan springs back hard destablizing everything. (they will do this as sabotage or an economic nuke.) Republicans will take all the blame for the following depresion and the corruption that caused it. (Nothing sucks like a Hoover)
The Republican party will be dispanded, and perhaps a world war (over intelectual property) will occour. Laws on software will radically change for the better in 2012-2015 bringing the US inline with less recent but still new international IP law.
As crazy as it seems, the scarriest thing to me right now is a Democrat winning. Most of these things will still happen but the Democrats will take the blame. Democrats are way to weak to survive a disasterous presidency and will dispand.
Obviously whatever party is dispanded will be replaced, but the populist replacment will take time to accumulate power and the country will swing hard to the left or the right.
Somebody please laugh at me.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
If any state's votes have to be thrown out over mangled electronic voting machine votes, that'll get the question of electronic voting to the WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING level.
That's what needs to be done.
A little Googling should disclose every county/state where Diebold has deployed.
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