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. ""

Comments

Slashdot is a small portion of the public

[Neophytus]

This needs to make mainstream press, and DAMN QUICK.

Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public

[kryzx]

The question is: would Diebold be just too damn idiotic and incompetent to even notice shennanigans like that (95% probability), OR are they more capable and devious than they appear - meaning they've locked down access by anyone but themselves, so *They'll* be in control (05% probability)?
Frankly, either way it's scary.
But the rampant security issues, rather than one carefully managed secret hole, indicate that the first option is much more likely.

Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public

[Thorsett]

Yep. And guess what party that woud be?

From today's Ohio Beacon Journal"

Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc., told Republicans in an Aug. 14 fund-raising letter that he is ``committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.''

Question

[Kjella]

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

OSS

[casuist99]

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??

Re:OSS

[default luser]

But then why not just use paper ballots in the first place??

Because one of the hottest debates in a recount is over disputed ballots. One only had to see the whole hanging chad / pregnant chad bullshit in Florida to grasp this concept.

Imagine this: the voters get clean laser printout with their selections. The voters verify the selections and put them in the box. A week later, a recount is issued, and wow! No disputed ballots! It's all there in plain toner.

Of course, the ballots would probably have a barcode to be used for recount, and some 1337 haxor could alter the barcode while printing out the proper selections, causing the recount to be skewed. But if the recount is thorough, then eventually someone will count the printed-out selections, and spot the discrepancy.

mod me down

[Anonymous Coward]

"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

Re:mod me down

[ChaosDiscord]

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.

The connection is a plain old modem connection (as mentioned in the article). By its very nature it's able to receive information in addition to sending it. Hopefully the machines won't accept any modifications to the vote record, but this does establish that an previously unknown channel, open during an actual election, is available. It doesn't necessarily mean anything wrong was occurring, but it does mean that it's possible for something wrong to happen. For something as important as our democracy, I demand the highest levels of security. Trusting a private company with strong political ties to do the right thing seems stupid.

You think, maybe, the voting machine pushes its data to a repository and defined intervals? Maybe? kinda?

Hmmm, I'd really rather not have my voting machine sending its vote information to a private company in the middle of the vote. Again, as mentioned in the article, by law you cannot count the votes until the polls have closed. Making the numbers available to an outside party isn't allowed. (This is, of course, why there are exit polls instead of the networks just hooking up to the poll computers for up to the minute totals.)

Re:Voting machine manufacturer wants votes for Bus

[snarfer]

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?

Will anyone do anything about it now? Nah...

[szemeredy]

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...

Re:Voting machine manufacturer wants votes for Bus

[Lemmy Caution]

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.

Re:Why bother?

[Teancum]

While the Communist party would be fun, a couple of others would be of more interest:

• The National Pot Party
  
• Pan-sexual Peace Party
  
• The Internet Party
  
• The Expansionist Party (feeling that Geo. W. Bush is a pansy and not being agressive enough in the expansion of the USA throughout the world)
  

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.

Re:Voting machine manufacturer wants votes for Bus

[snarfer]

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?

How to create honest and fair electronic voting

[stretch0611]

1. Make the entire system end-to-end open source. This way any alleged abuses can be found in the code. (or proof that they do not exist in the code)
2. Force everyone to use the same system. Develop it at a national level for use at every local level. This insures everyone is using the same thing and that there are no advantages in one juristiction over another.
3. Use separate systems for voter registration/verification and voting. The first system should allow a person to use any voting facility in his juristiction and function like the log books. It will verify that a person only votes once. It can be hooked up to a WAN so that he can not leave and vote in another polling place. When he is signs in he is given a keycode to access the second system. It should be a unique keycode that can only be used to vote once and not tied back to his/her registration. With a valid keycode you log into the voting system and exercise your civic duty. When the transaction is complete your voting choices are stored with the keycode. Because the keycode is not tied to the registration your anonymity is preserved.
4. When the polls close, the number of votes are compared to the number of keycodes assigned for verification. At this point a phone or network jack can be connected to the voting computer for transmission of the results.

More headlines...

[NineNine]

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...

Re:Voting machine manufacturer wants votes for Bus

[Experiment 626]

I tend to be wary of "Corporations = Republicans = Evil" type rants, as they are often fairly knee-jerk and unfounded, so I poked around a bit. In this case there is a connection, albeit a pretty minor one.

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.

The absolute best way to fight this is;

[TyrranzzX]

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!

Re:Why bother?

[GOD_ALMIGHTY]

Watch that "F" word if you want your argument to remain credible. There's practically a corallary to Godwin's law over the "F" word.

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. php

Please read this article and tell others about it if you care at all about where this country is headed.

Neither "fascism" nor "racism" will do us the favour of returning in such a way that we can recognise them easily. If vigilance was only a game of recognising something already well-known, then it would only be a question of remembering. Vigilance would be reduced to a social game using reminiscence and identification by recognition, a consoling illusion of an immobile history peopled with events which accord with our expectations or our fears.
-- Pierre-Andre Taguieff

The great "isms" of nineteenth-century Europe -- conservatism, liberalism, socialism -- were associated with notable rule, characterized by deference to educated leaders, learned debates, and (even in some forms of socialism) limited popular authority. Fascism is a political practice appropriate to the mass politics of the twentieth century. Moreover, it bears a different relationship to thought than do the nineteenth-century "isms." Unlike them, fascism does not rest on formal philosophical positions with claims to universal validity. There was no "Fascist Manifesto," no founding fascist thinker. 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.
-- Robert O. Paxton, Mellon Professor of Social Sciences Emeritus at Columbia University

Re:Voting machine manufacturer wants votes for Bus

[willtsmith]

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

MSFT and Republicans dead in one global blow

[Odinson]

Here is my distorted view of the world....

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.