Diebold Audit Released, BlackBoxVoting.Org Shut Down

Chris Soghoian writes "The State of Maryland requested an audit of the Diebold electronic voting system by SAIC, after a report released by Johns Hopkins University and Rice Researchers (disclaimer: I'm one of Dr Rubin's students) noted several security issues. A condensed, from 200 to 40 pages, and censored version of the report has been released online (PDF link). The report notes that 'SAIC has identified several high-risk vulnerabilities that, if exploited, could have significant impact upon the AccuVote-TS voting system operation.'" However, Diebold says Maryland are moving forward with installation with "new security features" included, and elsewhere, Badgerman points out "Diebold has shut down blackboxvoting.org, apparently with copyright claims made to their ISP. But you can still go to the blackboxvoting.com site."

Comments

Blackboxvoting is a great case waiting to happen

[Anonymous Coward]

The Supreme Court is always most willing to hear cases when they involve political speech and voting, and this involves both.

Diebold is winning

[corebreech]

Pending: your vote is now the property of Diebold, Inc. Any attempt on your part to ascertain the disposition of your vote is hereby declared to be in violation of federal law, e.g., the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

You have the right not to vote. Any vote you make can be used against you in a court of law. The judge presiding in such a court of law may be appointed by Diebold, Inc., and need not require a jury, but if a jury is summoned, it need not be a jury of your peers.

By acting to vote you consent to our determining whether your vote is valid, and in the event it is judged not to be valid, you consent to our voiding your vote and further voiding your right to vote in the future.

You furthermore acknowledge that owing to storage and bandwidth limitations that Diebold, Inc., may experience, your vote may be digitally compressed in a way such that your true intent in casting the vote may be lost. If such an eventuality should occur, your vote may be determined using statistical data derived from any source we deem appropriate or convenient.

You have the right to protest if your vote is cancelled, altered, or in any way modified as the result of such action on our part, however, you hereby acknowledge that in such an eventuality, Diebold, Inc. may determine that your right to vote is deleterious to democracy as implement by Diebold, Inc., and therefore may be considered to be an overt act against the national security of these United States.

You have 10 seconds to comply.

God Bless America.

Re:Diebold is winning

[grasshoppa]

I was laughing for a while, now I am just sitting here in silence trying hard to convince myself that was a joke.

hanging bits?

[kd5ujz]

Are we going to have to check the bit bucket for hanging bits?

I insist on paper and pencil voting

[Anonymous Coward]

How else can I add one option at the end of the ballot:

__X__ CowboyNeal

Insecure Voting

[chrispyman]

I don't see how anyone will accept electronic voting systems as insecure as this. Diebold should be as open in security vunerabilities as many open source projects are and support full public disclosure along with prompt patching.

Why is the mass media not all over this????

[Blademan007]

This totally need to be crammed down every voting American's throat. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Re:Why is the mass media not all over this????

[AaronW]

Actually this was part of a headline article over at Salon.com. The article is available here.

Re:Why is the mass media not all over this????

[Blademan007]

I'm aware of that, but I still haven't see anything on any TV channel or major newsprint.

Re:Why is the mass media not all over this????

[kramer2718]

Why? Because the mass media has no interest in overthrowing the corrupt big-business driven world of politics. And why should they? All the major media companies are owned by huge corporations who profit by people not being fairly represented. How does that work? Well, if people were fairly represented, then campaign finance reform would happen and businesses wouldn't be able to bribe our elected officials. Yes, I know there's not a direct connection to Diebold voting systems except that Diebold IS big business.

Re:Why is the mass media not all over this????

[LostCluster]

Diebold's market capitalization is roughly $3.775 billion... That's not exactly a small business, but it's not quite on the same level as the major media companies either.

Re:Why is the mass media not all over this????

[cmarkn]

No one wants campaign finance "reform" more than the major media companies. Because the "reforms" that everyone talks about would turn total control of who gets to use the mass media over to the media. As it is now, even the people who are not popular with the media moguls get to be heard because they can spend money, and the media are forced to sell them ads. Once you put in your "reforms", anyone who is not being supported by either Ted Turner or Rupert Murdoch will completely disappear from any coverage at all.

And the best part? They won't have to spend any money to bribe elected officials, all they have to do is give them some attention, and they'll own them. Only it will be from the day they start considering whether to run, not from the day they get elected.

At least two people will be fairly represented. None of the rest of us though.

Re:Why is the mass media not all over this????

[EchoMirage]

Because the mass media has no interest in overthrowing the corrupt big-business driven world blah blah blah

Parsing error: Too many typical conspiracy/Slashdot-cynicism words in one sentence. Please remove the ad hominem text cited above and try again, proceeding with logic this time instead of hysterics.

Seriously, is this the best we can do? Of course there are vile reasons behind Diebold's getting away with this, but do you have to resort to this tired, adolescent "mass media loves big corporations loves evil government" schtick to get your point across?

I'll give you a hint: when you start your arguments like this, absolutely nobody listens to what follows.

Re:Why is the mass media not all over this????

[gaijin99]

Of course it needs to be aired publicly. Its a potential threat to the very basis of our government. The reason why it isn't is quite simple: corporate ownership.

CEO's are a quite tight group of people. Generally a person who sits on the board of one company sits on the board of up to ten other companies as well. Do you really think that MSNBC, CNN, FOX, ABC, etc, don't a) own stock in Diebold and other voting machine companies, and b) have board members who sit on Diebold's board as well?

Walden O'Dell, President of Diebold is also a board member of Lenox (yes, the heating and air conditioning company). This has nothing to do with media ownership, but demonstrates the amount of spread involved in corporate ownership.

Re:Why is the mass media not all over this????

[kramer2718]

You mean reforms like forcing those media companies to GRANT free portions of the PUBLIC's air-time to political candidates as part of the fee to let them use their part of the spectrum?

Re:Why is the mass media not all over this????

[Anonymous Coward]

"Ad hominem" - Means against the man, to not attack the argument but the person. There is nothing ad hominem about:
"Because the mass media has no interest in overthrowing the corrupt big-business driven world blah blah blah.

It's not the most eloquent sentence but the point is valid; the large media outlets very obviously have self interest in maintaining the status quo hence, Britney kissing Madonna is front page news while actual documented vote fraud is overlooked.

The irony here is that you then go on to use an ad hominem attack by calling the original poster "adolescent". Simply amazing.

I'll give you a hint: Do not attempt to sound smarter than you are, it's very transparent.

Re:Why is the mass media not all over this????

[kcbrown]

Seriously, is this the best we can do? Of course there are vile reasons behind Diebold's getting away with this, but do you have to resort to this tired, adolescent "mass media loves big corporations loves evil government" schtick to get your point across?

Of course, since mass media is big corporations, the above reduces to "big corporations love evil government", something which has been proven repeatedly over time.

Jesus, do you need us to spell it out for you?

1. Large corporations have a common set of interests and attributes:
   • They want to lock out as much competition as possible.
   • They want their labor pool to be as cheap as possible.
   • They want their customer base to be as captive as possible.
   • They want to be as free as possible to do whatever they want.
   • They are short-term thinkers, so they don't care about the long term consequences of their actions upon their market.
   • They are driven only by profit, so ethics never enters the equation when they decide upon an action, only law (and then, only law that they don't think they can get away with breaking) and profit.
2. Because of (1), they will naturally tend to lobby for roughly the same things, and these things will often be at odds with things that would be beneficial to the general population.
3. The media is owned, and thus controlled, by some of those very same corporations.
4. Because of (2) and (3), no federal-level politician who is unwilling to cater to the needs of the corporations that own the media is likely to win their first election, because you can't win an election if the voters don't know about you. In fact, such a politician would be very unlikely to win for that very reason.
5. You're a moron if you think the media corporations and other corporations don't talk to each other about their common interests.
6. Hence, the only politicians that, in general, can win an election are those who bow to the demands of this country's large corporations.
7. And hence, the politicians will listen to large corporations to a much greater degree than they will listen to the voters directly. Rare indeed is the issue that will galvanize an entire voter population against you if you side with the corporations. Rarer still is such an issue that the voter population hears about through the mass media; because, as I said, you're a moron if you think the media corporations don't talk with other corporations about their common interests.

Call it a "tired conspiracy theory" if you want, but the links in the chain from a to b to c are so strong and backed by so much evidence (circumstantial or otherwise) that you'd be a fool to discount this "schtick" out of hand.

Come up with a hypothesis that does a better job of explaining both what we've been seeing and what we haven't been seeing and is consistent with everything we currently know and I, for one, will sit up and take notice. But until then, this "conspiracy theory" does a better job of explaining just about everything that has been happening than anything else I've seen.

I'm no conspiracy nut. My most valuable tool is the scientific method, and most conspiracy theories are certainly crap. But this particular "schtick" is very different, and I'll continue to use it to explain the goings on until I find a better explanation.

Re:Why is the mass media not all over this????

[TPFH]

Who gives a shit if it is conspiracy?

Because it isn't a conspiracy, and if you are not careful in the way you explain something it might end up sounding like one. Also....

AND A DUMB FUCK LIKE YOU REFUSES TO OPEN YOUR EYES!

is kind of an ad hominem attack. Please refrain from that. It is rather pointless.

Anyway, returning to the question of media, it is more a matter of simple economics than consipracy, although part of it is jornalistic lazyness. It is not so much a matter of the mainstream loves big corporations as it is that the mainstream media is made up of big corporations. Very few corporations, and getting smaller with media consolidation.

News reports that reflect badly on advertisers or the parent company are generally frowned upon. They are usually not outright censored, but more self-censored. It is bad for business and people who hurt the bottom line don't get promoted etc.

As to the lazyness factor, just look at how predicable the news is: Weather, sports, fluffy puppy story, and a horrible crime or accident. With the "big headline" news usually all the news channels will report on the same thing that they think is going to be the biggest scoop, ignoring everything else. And has anyone else noticed how many national stories there are on the local news, even when it was reported on the national news program of the same channel?

As for the topic at hand, we need a voting system that can be evaulated beforehand as well as audited after the election. I don't want fraudulent elections from either the Republicans or the Democrats. As bad as politics is now, just imagine how corrupt either party would be without any accountability to the voters whatsoever.

Republicans and Democrats may not be exactly the same, but on the whole seem to be equally corrupt. There are exeptions but those seem to be few and far between.

Re:Why is the mass media not all over this????

[crucini]

But nothing in your post explains why the media would look out for Diebold, a maker of banking and security equipment. You seem to be going on the assumption that corporations just like to help each other out, but that same short-sighted greedy nature you correctly identified means that corporations generally don't help each other out, even when it would be easy or beneficial.

The media has covered (to death) lots of stories that hurt corporations, big and small. Alar? Firestone tires? Faked truck explosion?

If you take off the biased glasses, you'll see that the media is just dumb and slow to respond. Eventually some lazy, plagiarizing journalist will copy the story from Salon and Wired, and it will trickle through the normal channels. About six months after you're completely sick of it. See RIAA lawsuits for another example.

Re:Why is the mass media not all over this????

[kcbrown]

But nothing in your post explains why the media would look out for Diebold, a maker of banking and security equipment.

One reason the media corporations might not be interested in covering something like the Diebold situation is that there's little corporations hate more than uncertainty. The ability to rig elections via voting machines like the Diebold ones introduces certainty into the election process itself. While the current situation means that the person elected will probably be someone favorable to the corporations that own the media (at the very least), the ability to rig an election will make that a certainty.

The media has covered (to death) lots of stories that hurt corporations, big and small. Alar? Firestone tires? Faked truck explosion?

The Firestone tire incident was over two years ago! What has the media done since then that has actually caused a large corporation to lose significant money? And how often does the media do so? I'd say it's relatively rare. The Firestone tire incident is the last such incident I can think of that really qualifies.

You seem to be going on the assumption that corporations just like to help each other out, but that same short-sighted greedy nature you correctly identified means that corporations generally don't help each other out, even when it would be easy or beneficial.

Huh? Then what exactly do you call all the partnerships, preferred providers, mergers, etc. that happen all the time in the business world? What do you think collusion is ?

You're right that corporate greed will hinder corporations from assisting each other, but that's only when the corporations in question are in direct competition with each other. And even direct competitors might assist each other at some level when they all stand to gain in the short term by doing so.

What else do you call the RIAA, but a partnership between corporations that would otherwise be in competition with each other?

No, there are far too many examples of corporations, even competitors, cooperating with each other to ignore it, especially when talking about something as important and lucrative as influence over the government.

If you take off the biased glasses, you'll see that the media is just dumb and slow to respond. Eventually some lazy, plagiarizing journalist will copy the story from Salon and Wired, and it will trickle through the normal channels. About six months after you're completely sick of it. See RIAA lawsuits for another example.

If the media is slow to respond then why is it reporting RIAA lawsuits as they happen, but not saying anything about Diebold? No, the media is perfectly capable of reporting events quickly when it wants to.

The RIAA lawsuits are a good example, actually: they're reporting them, but they're doing so in such a way that it makes the RIAA look good (or at least not look bad). What do you think is the most plausible explanation for that spin?

Re:Why is the mass media not all over this????

[Jaysyn]

I wonder why they (I forget exactly who) were trying to stop the California recall election until electronic voting systems (Diebold's?) were in place in all districts?

Makes you wonder if their intentions were nobel.

Jaysyn

Re:Why is the mass media not all over this????

[metamatic]

As it is now, even the people who are not popular with the media moguls get to be heard because they can spend money, and the media are forced to sell them ads.

You're full of it. Adbusters have repeatedly had their ads refused by major media corporations, even though they were prepared to pay the going rate. The media said they would not run the ads for any price. So even if you have money, the current system doesn't necessarily give you a voice.

Re:Why is the mass media not all over this????

[pmz]

At least two people will be fairly represented. None of the rest of us though.

How is this any different than the last 100 years?

We've got the Democraps and the Repugnicans, and all is well. If sages like Britney Spears tell us to trust in our president, why should we ask questions? We have to have faith in the the massive power a federal government wields over the people! Only they are so wise to guide each of us in our daily tasks. It is great that there are millions of laws to provide clarity and reason behind our chaotic and aimless lives! Our compassionate administration will only make things better! Don't you see?!?!

(I really like how polarized many people get about corrupt and insatiable corporations, when their beloved government-based social justice system is absolutely no better)

Re:Why is the mass media not all over this????

[kcbrown]

So, what you are saying is that, even though Diebold's ability to rig elections will stop big media companies having (almost) total control over elections, it's willing to cover Diebold's ass, because Diebold will probably (s)elect somebody who will help out big media companies?

It will not stop big media's control over elections, it will enhance it.

Just ask yourself what's better for the media companies:

1. A situation in which the politician that gets elected will probably, but not certainly, be in the pocket of the media corporations.
2. A situation in which the politician that gets elected will certainly, no questions asked, be in the pocket of the media corporations.

I'd say they'd prefer the second, wouldn't you?

To make that happen, they need to be able to rig elections. They can't do so right now because there's no central point of control. But with the Diebold machines in place, there's a central point of control: Diebold. So now it becomes a question of how to control Diebold.

The media corporations won't say anything about it as long as Diebold plays ball with them. If Diebold stops cooperating, the media corps blow the whistle with a big scam that would immediately remove Diebold's control and would make the media corps a bunch of money as a result of the heightened interest on the part of viewers and readers. That would put the media corporations back into the current situation, in which their control is probabilistic and not certain, but it would reduce Diebold to irrelevance.

And that is why the media hasn't said shit about it, and won't; and why Diebold will defer to the media corporations when necessary.

Now: what part of the above is "weak"?

Re:Why is the mass media not all over this????

[aminorex]

If you take a look at the board membership of the
publically traded companies in the U.S., you will
very quickly come to see that the interests of the
media corporations coincide with those of the
corporations which are outside of the media sector:
The set of persons who occupy the boards of the
publically traded companies is quite small, and
a few notables occupy seats on a large number of
boards. It is the interests of this elite few
that dictate the policies of the bulk of the
publically traded corporations in the U.S., and
they are fully capable of coordinating the
policies and efforts of their various companies
to any self-interested purpose.

Diebold sure liked that report

[exhilaration]

From: http://www.diebold.com/dieboldes/maryland.htm

SAIC's independent review states, "While many of the statements made by Mr. Rubin were technically correct, it is clear that Mr. Rubin did not have a complete understanding of the State of Maryland's implementation of the AccuVote-TS voting system...The State of Maryland's procedural controls and general voting environment reduce or eliminate many of the vulnerabilities identified in the Rubin report."

SAIC's report continues, "Rubin states repeatedly that he does not know how the [Diebold] system operates in an election and he further identifies the assumptions that he used to reach his conclusions. In those cases where these assumptions concerning operational or management controls were incorrect, the resultant conclusions were, unsurprisingly, also incorrect."

Electronic Voting...

[samj]

if implemented properly, could revolutionise governance in general - pity it's being so badly implemented thus far. If voting were faster and cheaper it could be involved more regularly in all manner of decision making processes. I simply cannot believe that someone would implement such a critical system on any Microsoft platform, especially when there's plenty of alternatives out there. QNX comes to mind. Mind you it is no surprise to me that a company who chooses to start behind the 8 ball by making such a poor choice in platforms is subsequently found to show a disregard for security in general ('compromised' servers, serious flaws, etc.). I hope they're enjoying 'whack-a-mole' because you can bet that for every site they manage to take down, 10 others will pop up!

Re: Electronic Voting...

[Black Parrot]

> if implemented properly, could revolutionise governance in general - pity it's being so badly implemented thus far.

I think "revolutionise governance" is exactly the problem most of us are worried about.

Re:Electronic Voting...

[gaijin99]

That isn't "governance." It's mob rule.

Feh. And other words of disgust. One of the main purposes of the constitution, and the bill of rights, is to avoid the problem of "tyrany of the majority", while simultaniously allowing free and democratic government.

Certainly a free for all democracy, without any sort of "No, you can't use the government to do this" would cause problems. Democracy, in and of itself, is not sufficient. But we have more than just a democracy, and so does every other first world nation. By explicitly limiting the government's power, and by making those limits quite difficult to change, things work quite well.

What we need is more accountability, less secrecy, and greater transparency. A government of a few tyranical types tends to have a half-life of around 30 to 40 years, and when they collapse (and they always do) its not pretty. Look at the Soviet Union for an example of this.

Re:Electronic Voting...

[Dalcius]

Well, something needs to swing one way or the other. In this day, you can only choose between two people, thus you don't have a whole lot of choice when it comes to stances. And it's pretty ludicrous to argue that representatives are generally responsible for their actions or to their constituents.

Maybe I'm just too cynical.

I'd personally like to log onto a secure website (I mean NSA type secure), select the issues I'm interested in (business, privacy, computers/internet, etc), and by default have a list of 5 "daily votes" related to my selected topics come up for me to vote on. Let everyone have the same. This removes a boatload of bureaucracy, makes government abide by the people, etc.

Then, IMO, it'd be a good idea to have government funded public debates in every community that anyone can attend. I akin it to Slashdot: a community debate is going to have lots of absolute retards, but I'll hear at least a few ideas and points of view that I hadn't considered for any given issue. On top of that, I'll hear from a number of folks who know more about an issue than I do. Most disagreements in my experience aren't based on judgement, but on information and communication. An open community debate would seem to be a better solution to this problem.

[end ramble]

Re:Electronic Voting...

[kfg]

Two words: Patriot Act.

You do understand that in a number of polls the "people" have been shown more than willing to completely renounce Constitution and the Bill of Rights?

And, of course ( here comes Godwin's Law), Hitler was voted dictator for life in a democratic election.

KFG

Re:Electronic Voting...

[gaijin99]

And, of course ( here comes Godwin's Law), Hitler was voted dictator for life in a democratic election.

Well, yes and no. Hitler was voted dictator in a democratic election where armed thugs kept things going smoothly for him. Same as Mussolini was. It's one of the halmarks of facism: elecitons that are controled by threat of violence.

So, I'll have to disagree with your conclusion that too much democracy was what allowed Hitler to become a power.

Re:Electronic Voting...

[kfg]

Ah, but that wasn't my conclusion at all. My conclusion was that democracy was no prevention at all for it happening. This is a very different conclusion from the one you stated.

And of course fear and thuggery has never been a deciding factor in an election in America and could never happen on a national scale.

Because, well, because this is America, God Bless Her, everyone.

Right now America is broken. Most of it doesn't even know it's broken, even though every time Ashcroft opens his mouth more fascist hate spews out of it.

Why is it broken?

Because the voting public has already refused to use their democratic rights inherent in the Constitutional system to prevent it from becoming this broken.

In fact, most approve of it.

KFG

does the public know or care?

[airConditionedGypsy]

I think most here would agree that electronic voting systems are a waste of time without a physical audit trail, but as far as the public's concerned, hi-tech is better...as long as I have a nice GUI where I can go File>Vote>Undo I'll be happy to click and then shuffle out of the voting booth with a confident but bewildered smile on my face.

She's done a fair amount of research on electronic voting systems.

Typical...

[Black Parrot]

The meme for the 21st Century seems to be "if your product is faulty, abuse IP laws to squash anyone who mentions it", rather than, say, fixing the damn problem.

Re:Typical...

[jjoyce]

I don't think that their systems are faulty. I think they work as designed.

How many precincts in CA use Diebold?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

I wonder how many precincts in CA plan to use the Diebold system, with its well-known cracks, in the upcoming Gubernatorial Recall election.

With a broad field of candidates splitting the vote, and the field-leader taking the race, small margins could easily swing the election - which means a small number of compromised precincts could swing the election.

And with no human-readable audit trail, if you thought the stink over the Florida Presidential results was bad you ain't seen NOTHING yet.

Re:How many precincts in CA use Diebold?

[ElectricRook]

Oddly enough, the ACLU was suing

That's not odd if you consider that the ACLU is owned by one of the political parties.

Hint... Did the ACLU sue when the US Coast Guard found several ballot boxes floating in the San Francisco Bay after the last election?

Re:How many precincts in CA use Diebold?

[Jeremy Erwin]

That's not odd if you consider that the ACLU is owned by one of the political parties.
So Bob Barr finally switched parties and became a Democrat? Good for him!

Insecure by nature, not just design

[globalar]

The problem really stems from the fact that as soon as you mechanize the process, you have essentially hidden it from direct scrutiny (it's almost encapsulated). There is a layer of technical junk between you and the actual results.

And what is worse is the data is physically very sensitive (easy to destroy or tamper with). The fact that the information is drawn from many sources (all across the country), means a lot room for any sort of problem.

Unfortunately, any electronic voting system will probably never be open source. I do not think the government will show that kind of trust.

I think these voting machines may end up forcing recalls, albeit electronically, even though the Supreme Court clearly wants to prevent that kind of precedence (for good reason).

Undprecedented!!!

[ChangeOnInstall]

Just read this quote from a Diebold press release that is being refuted on blackboxvoiting.com:

"The thorough system assessment conducted by SAIC verifies that the Diebold voting station provides an unprecedented level of election security." (emphasis mine)

Unfortuantely, in this case, blackboxvoting is quite wrong, and Diebold press release is entirely correct. You see, the word "unprecedented" doesn't necessarily mean "good". It means "without precedent". The level of security offered by these voting machines is most certainly "without precedent".

Re:Can anything be done about it?

[Anonymous Coward]

See, I mentioned in another post I work right next to Diebold, and its just a tiny ass little company like mine.

I work in the public safety field, we sell integrated dispatching and records systems to cops. I busted my ass working 80 hour weeks for about six months to complete a rewrite of the records system. It worked exactly like it should, it was completely intuitive and followed police procedures to a T.

Then I go out onsite to a client in california, and dipshit politically appointed top cops fuck the whole thing up. They want to book people before they arrest them. (Ie, data is imported into the arrest module from booking, not the other way like it was designed) Put people in jail, then arrest them? wha?

They want to automatically generate bills for false alarms that havent been registered. And send them where? Huh? You call 911 because your neighbours alarm went off, thats the only address I have to work with, so you get a bill.

The dispatchers want to clear calls with F1 so that they dont have to "reach off of the keyboard". They have no problem taking their hands off the keyboard to reach into a fucking bag of cheetos.

Oh and the fucking buzzwords. The bullshit bingo they play. "We want security, does this communicate to the database using RSA?" wtf?

But hey, we gotta eat. Baby gets what baby wants. One day that bungled up gang of keystone cops is going to drop the ball, and blame our systems rather than their own incompetence.

In short, government folks are idiots. I wouldnt be surprised if Diebolds system worked flawlessly before some jackass civil servants got their moronic ideas of how computers should work into it.

Anyhow, as someone who busts his ass off to make the morons in charge of government contractors happy, I cant help but side with Diebold in the end. Ensuring the elections are secure and without fraud is the governments fault, not theirs.

Auditor Weighs In

[Inexile2002]

We are f**ked. If a political system is so broken that it can't keep this from getting through then... well...

We are f**ked.

I really am an IT Auditor for a living and this is exactly the kind of work I do (although I mostly work for Utility Companies like water or electricity) and I know how these reports are created. There is HUGE pressure to "build assurance".

What that means is that you find an risk that is not addressed by a suitible control - and try to find a control - something, anything, that you can call a control to cover that risk. That's all fine and good, but what it means is that the risks that actually make it into the report are the really big, bad, completely unaccounted for ones. Put another way, for every risk that gets in, three didn't that a normal person would have thought should have.

Long and short, I write reports like this for a living and this is way, way, way worse than it looks.

This is very scary: but... Diebolt will lose

[sjgman9]

OK Dieboldt, do you really think that suing computer scientists will give you any good PR?

Look, your voting software has more holes than swiss cheese. We are willing to help you, but there are some requirements you must follow.

1) your voting machines must have a printer attached
2) the votes must be counted electronically, optically, and by humans
3) if the printout doesnt match whats on screen, then remove the machine.
4) the paper ballot is the final record.

Look let the computer science community improve your software. We all want the election to go through in an error-free way. No one wants a florida to happen again.

But, if you fight this tooth and nail, you will have no fiercer enemy. Ignore the Slashdot nation at your own peril

Re:This is very scary: but... Diebolt will lose

[Nogami_Saeko]

On the contrary...

I rather think the Republicans aren't all that worried about a "Florida happening again". After all, it did get a Republican into the oval office didn't it...

It's odd though, speaking as a Canadian who has always though that although not perfect, the US electoral system had a fair number of checks and balances, it absolutely blows my mind that this sort of un-checked corporate crap isn't being stopped in it's tracks.

It's like 9/11 gave the politicians and big business license to do whatever the hell they want to with your entire country and the economy, and they're screwing it up at a simply astounding rate. "Patriot" take-away-your rights acts, a court denying a "do-not call list" that 50 MILLION people want for the benefit of a few telemarketing lobbyists, big companies trying to patent even the most trivial of ideas... Where does it end?

I mean, this latest info about a company making machines to support democratic elections that has no "unalterable record", easy bypassing (or complete lack) of database passwords, and executives talking about just printing "system check" on the screen without any actual checking being done because the electoral regulations require a full system check before the system begins recording votes.

Frightening, absolutely frightening...

N.

Re:This is very scary: but... Diebolt will lose

[MickLinux]

When I left America around 2000, one of the major reasons was that for the previous 7 years, I was well aware that America was fallen.

I came to Lithuania, and my students asked me why I came. I told them "because America has fallen". Nobody believed me.

Anyhow, immigration screwed up my papers, and I had to go back to America to reapply for entry. On 9/11, I was on a flight Warsaw-JFK. The towers fell -- but still it wasn't obvious to most that America was fallen.

I think it's becoming obvious to more people, now.

What do they mean by fallen? That the economy is going or gone; that freedom is going or gone. What do I mean by fallen? Then righteous living, honesty, and morality are gone, and therefore everything else is going to go too.

Let me be clear that although it was during Bill Clinton's term that I realized the US was fallen, it was not Clinton's fault. Clinton was a symptom. If he hadn't been born, then there'd be someone else. In the same way, our current predicament isn't GW's fault; Bush is a symptom. If it weren't him, it could as easily have been Gore, same Patriot Act, different signature.

If you want to trace it back to something, I'd probably suggest it was the 4/5 comprise in writing the US Constitution -- everything from there has been pretty logical in its progression.

That said, I have to say I'm no longer afraid, for two reasons; and I say that knowing that we again have tickets back to America, and we may well end up living there for the rest of our lives, my intended plans aside. I won't say the first reason I'm no longer afraid; but the second is the book of Habakkuk, only three chapters long.

But as for voting, I don't think there's a lot that can be done. However, my uncle wondered if maybe a voter could sue to have his votes counted by hand, since that lawsuit was successsful against the Educational Testing Service.

Here's what he said:
I wonder if there is court common-law precedence against automatic vote counting. I had a lot of complaints against ETS whon I applied to graduate school, about the way they have poor security on their tests, the way they lost all of the tests from Montreal, and then informed my application schools that I had failed to show up to write the GRE. But in doing that complaining, I found out that people had taken them to court about machine scoring, and the court ruled that if test takers want their exams scored by hand, then ETS has to do that. Also, the court ruled that ETS must reveal what they think are the correct answers to their questions. I wonder if those kinds of rulings from the 1970s (New York Supreme Court, I think) could be carried over to this. That a voter could insist that their vote be counted by hand, not machine.

Not any more...

[Xandu]

But you can still go to the blackboxvoting.com site.

...until the slashdot effect sets in!

in other news

[SHEENmaster]

6,000,000,000 people placed type-in votes for an independent candidat known as "I.P. Freely"

"I.C. Weener" of the Cryoget Washington Head party and "Amanda Hugenkiss" tied for second with exactly 42424242 votes apiece.

Re:Diebold

[kfg]

These techies just trying to make living wouldn't happen to have a few sales people just trying to make a living as well?

These sales people wouldn't, perhaps, have represented the machines as somewhat better than "substandard," now would they?

No, the states aren't forced to buy them, but "just trying to make a living" don't cut it.

How else is the same sentiment sometimes phrased? Oh, yeah.

"A girl's got to make living."

KFG

Why not hand-count?

[daffmeister]

With all the problems with electronic voting, punch-card voting, hanging chads etc, why even use machines for vote counting? Why not just have paper and pencil and hand-count?

Federal elections in Australia with a population of 20 million are run this way with no problem.

Before you say, "but America has many more voters", well, they can also have many more vote counters.

Re:Why not hand-count?

[lpontiac]

Hand-counting? But what about all the companies that sell voting machinery? Think of the impact on jobs, on industry!

Clearly, these 'volunteers' are unacceptable. Maybe hand counting would work if the government subcontracted counting to a company which charged hundreds of millions to employ counters at minimum wage, and keep the rest for shareholders.

Re:Why not hand-count?

[stratjakt]

Florida proved to us that we have a severe shortage of people who know how to count.

Re:Why not hand-count?

[gaijin99]

Sure, you can have double-counts and triple-counts, but in a land where the campaign costs almost as much as budget of the office-holder, you can also double-bribe and triple-bribe.

That's why the security of these automated systems is so important... they *must* be more secure than a bunch of volunteers hand-counting.

The problem with this line of argument is that with machine count it becomes a matter of bribing one person: the one in charge of the machine...

This is why transparency is important. It really doesn't matter whether the ballots are counted by people, machines, or trained chimps, as long as the process can be viewed, verified, and checked by any concerned party (including individual voters) it will work quite well. When only a select few are allowed to see, verify, etc, the process than those select few can, and will, be corrupted.

An open source system, which produces paper receipts, looks like the only real option.

If these things are used in election 2004...

[robson]

...we're screwed. I mean all kinds of screwed.

Not just "they messed up my vote" screwed, but entire-election-results-legitimately-contested screwed.

The problem is that they're raising the margin of error by an unknowable amount. No matter which party wins in the 2004 Presidential election, the loser will easily be able to argue that the voting system was highly flawed and vulnerable to foul play. It will be a replay of 2000, except worse.

Using a system that's known to be insecure for national elections... it's just a guaranteed disaster. We'll have another election settled in court, and the populace of the U.S. will become even more polarized.

Getting to the site

[keller999]

But you can still go to the blackboxvoting.com site.

Yeah, you could have...just before this article went up!

Really, only one possible reason

[Wierd Willy]

For the elections to be so obviously and openly rigged is to make sure that there is no dissenting opinion available. The Communists and Facists regularly skewed and falsified election results to prevent anyone from actually challenging their methods and agendas. Which, I might remind you all, was mass murder, wholesale pilliaging of national treasuries and imprisonment of dissedents. Fact is, Americans already have accepted the Fascist philosophy now being touted as "patriotism". Call me a nut, but thats what we are looking at. If Bush wins, I will consider this to be the end of the United States, and I will make serious efforts to leave the country. It would no longer be worth my time, effort or loyalty if the Fascists win another election.

And these men ARE fascists people, in every sense of the word. You think there would be any "open source" after that? This administration has already made little noises about Linux and BSD being "hackers" operating systems, there have been several years worth of propaganda about "freeware" being something only criminals use to steal and sabotage. You can damn well bet that it would be outlawed, or at least, brought under private control of some sort where it would be rigidly controlled.

Can you say heil SCO? Whether or not they actually have a claim, which they don't, it would only take a few lines of obscure law written into some other peice of legislation to change all that. It would be nothing for the fascists to declare something to be criminal or subversive and use that as an excuse for a major crackdown on the information industry.

But nobody really cares, as long as they can have their Hummers and Porches and Rolex watches.

Help the Electronic Voting Machine Project

[Lulu of the Lotus-Ea]

I've posted some similar notes to most of the recent articles about problems with commercial voting machines. For this one, I really want to actively recruit some developers to help out. There are parts of EVM2003 that are on track, but other parts need more developers. In particular, we really need some people with experience in blind-accessessibility for that portion of the project (both a system to allow voting, and one to vocalize printed ballots).

The idea of EVM2003 is to create Free Software voting machine, and to implement machines that also produce voter-verifiable paper trails (i.e. visually readable printed ballots). We will do a number of security things right, where the commercial companies have done them wrong... they have aimed for "security through obscurity" or "just trust us." As well, part of our requirement is to have fully blind-accessible voting that maintains complete anonymity.

Anyway, I (David Mertz) have taken over as Developer Lead recently, and am trying to move the development of the demo along.

Feel free to contact me--the standard ballot system (in the demo version at least) is being done in wxPython; but conceivably we would choose other languages/technologies for bar-code reading, printing, blind-voting, etc. (my preference is to use Python though, for consistency and rapid development).

Re:Personal reply from Bev Harris....

[Mike Nesmith]

I've been researching this stuff for three years now.

VERY scary shit.

About Diebold:
http://www.bartcop.com/diebold.htm

About ES&S:
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0131-01.htm

A Diebold machine is hacked, step-by-step and an election rigged here:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00064 .htm

Congressman Rush Holt's bill:
http://holt.house.gov/display2.cfm?id=6282&type=Ho me

Contact your Congressman here:
http://action.eff.org/action/index.asp?step=2&item =2754

A personal letter from Bev Harris I just received:

I like what I'm hearing. I'm not decided on what to do, but as far as mobilizing thousands, we need mirrors on the memos, and here is an update you may find interesting.

Please, send, tell or distribute this as widely as possible, including to blogs, your email list, and the media:

An update from Bev at Black Box Voting: Diebold, of course, demanded shut down of http://www.blackboxvoting.org (see London Inquirer article, "Diebold takes down blackboxvoting.org" http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=11743 ) because we published a link to another web site. More on this here http://www.blackboxvoting.com , and you'll find the letter from the Diebold attorney http://www.thoughtcrimes.org here -- and for a small hoot, please notice that the letter, which is not copyrighted, INCLUDES THE LINK (three times) which they object to, and therefore republishing the letter telling people not to publish the link actually serves to publish the link. We're working on replacing the site.

Here's what I've been doing for two days now:

REPORTER: Why is Diebold sending cease and desists?

ME: Because they don't want anyone to see their memos

REPORTER: Oh. What is in the memos?

ME: Oh, admissions by their top programmers about security flaws and using uncertified software and using cell phones to intercept and transfer votes and discussions of how to fake things...

REPORTER: Wow. Where can I download these?

ME: At this web site http://211.117.160.48:8000/s/lists/index.html or this web site
http://www.smashthetrifecta.com/diebold-memos-1.ht m

REPORTER: Okay I'm going there now, okay, it's downloading, when I'm done will you give me a guided tour?

ME: Sure. And also, go to this article for an easy-to-read primer: http://salon.com/tech/feature/2003/09/23/bev_harri s/index.html and also, here is a neat little web page
http://new.globalfreepress.com/mnogosearch/search. cgi
where you just enter any search term and it instantly searches and find you the Diebold memos that match

REPORTER: What search terms should I start with?

ME: Try "boogie man" and also "hack" "cel phone" "broken" "fake" "vaporware" and one of my personal favorites, "King County is famous for it" (I live in King County)

REPORTER: Here's one: "What good are rules" -- Gosh, what is he doing? Is that legal?

ME: No. And so it goes. Excellent plan, Diebold. Yes, shut down a web site, that'll help. Besides reporters, the memos have now been downloaded by the U.S. House of Representatives.

Postscript: Today, the SAIC report came out evaluating Diebold. It summarizes: FAILURE TO MEET THE MINIMUM STANDARDS SET FORTH BY THE STATE OF MARYLAND Information Security Policy and Standards indicates that the system is vulnerable to exploitation. The results of a successful attack could result in voting results being released too soon, altered, or destroyed. The impact of exploitation could lead to a failure of the elections process by failing to elect to office, or decide in a ballot measure, according to the will of the people. The impact could be a loss of voter confidence, embarrassment to the State, or release of incomplete or inaccurate election results

There won't be any stink at all

[roystgnr]

That's what the lack of a human-readable audit trail avoids: those pesky "ballots" that people might want to recheck for accuracy. The Diebold systems might not be any better than hanging chads, but you can be sure they'll seem better because there won't be any way to remeasure the results and get a different number.

Re:There won't be any stink at all

[Elwood P Dowd]

That's why we need to make the resulting vote counts obviously false.

Make every candidate in one county get 31337 votes?

Re:Paper + pen

[nudicle]

The postal service has to deal with incomprehensible writing thousands of times every day and seems to do a pretty good job of it. With a little practice, unless you're perhaps a doctor in a hurry, it's not an issue. This is because we have good pattern recognition algorithms in our brains and can usually decipher poor handwriting to get the point. More so if we have lots of experience doing it.

Blackboxvoting.com slashdotted

[MacGod]

"...But you can still go to the blackboxvoting.com site."

Er, well, you used to be able to. Not anymore, now that Slashdot got its teeth into it.

Convenience, which leads to real representation

[jcsehak]

Let's say we got a secure electronic voting system working that people could use over the internet, maybe it mapped to your social or something. Well, now you don't have to wait till election day to vote on stuff. Should we go to war? Let's vote on it. Should we raise taxes? Let's vote on it. It could pave the way for something that has never happened before in history -- a true rule by the people.

Maybe a better way..

[halo1982]

In Oklahoma, they use paper cards. There is a broken line with each of the canidate choices. You complete the line to make your selection. THe ink is magnetic, and you put it in the reader and it counts it electronically. It works quite well, is nearly fail safe, and is fast. I don't know why more states don't do something similar. Its kinda like best of both..

The conclusion of that thought

[Anonymous Coward]

The State of Maryland's procedural controls and general voting environment reduce or eliminate many of the vulnerabilities identified in the Rubin report."

And the report itself continues:

However, these controls, while sufficient to help mitigate the weaknesses identified in the July 23 report, do not, in many cases meet the standard of best practice or the State of MarylandSecurity Policy.

Machine voting not the problem

[Ian Bicking]

Machine voting isn't the problem, Diebold is. They've created a horrible, insecure system. It's simple enough to create a more secure system that it's hard not to believe Diebold is deliberately enabling fraud.

A system where votes were printed to a machine-readable piece of paper, verified by the voter, then deposited in a secure box, would be simple and secure. By printing votes you create a self-verifying system -- voters can check their vote is correct, and an audit can easily verify that votes were recorded as voters intended. Management of the printed records would be just like the ballots we already are using, but without the reliability problems of punch-card systems. Tallying could be done mechanically, as a barcode could accompany the printed text.

The whole system is very simple. Even if they just used an ATM style of security (printing to an internal paper log) they would be far superior to Diebold. But using logic is difficult in this case, because Diebold is clearly making absurd claims, and it's difficult to refute absurdity.

EVM 2003 is trying to create a complete open source voting system (not just machine). I wish them the best of luck. This is more than just philosophy about copyright and IP, it's the defense of democracy from those that want very much to take away even the slight accountability that currently exists. They've already made it into office with one fraudulent election (2000), and very possibly kept control of congress with another (2002, with many states being won with unverifiable votes that didn't match up with predicted results).

Re:Normies from Maryland just aren't concerned

[FeloniousPunk]

So is that how you explain your Republican governor?

The Constitution Amandment #28

[robbyjo]

In that case, they may as well make an amandment:

We the corporations of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Profit, establish monopoly, insure domestic compliance, provide for the common interest, promote our welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

[it's a joke people]

Diebold is aleady screwing California.

[tinrobot]

A number of CA counties use the touch screen machines, but the big holes are on the servers, not the voting machines. Those who use OCR ballots are also just as vulnerable because the back-end servers are the same.

There was an article on the Blackboxvoting.com site about how time stamps on files found on the Diebold FTP site indicate that Diebold downloaded vote counts DURING an election in Santa Barbara (??) county. For those who are unaware, it is against the law to count votes before the polls close.

So... part of the evidence suggests that employees of Diebold BROKE THE LAW by counting votes before the polls closed. No wonder Diebold wants to keep things secret.

So... this brings up a question. If I obtain a document indicating that a company broke the law, can that document be suppressed by saying it's copy righted? If so, that's a BIG problem.

Diebold would rather fix the election than lose.

[tinrobot]

What's amusing is that these companies could make more money selling voting machines with printers attached than they do with their current line.

Printers are cheap and totally NOT the issue. How much does a couple of thousand printers cost? A million bucks with a fat markup? Chicken feed for these people.

They will make a heck of a lot more money by rigging elections and putting people in office who will perpetuate the scam. Diebold also sells a lot more things to the government than voting machines.

The president of Diebold has personally promised to deliver the state of Ohio to Bush in 2004. If that's not conflict of interest, I don't know what is...

Oh... and the other voting machine company -- partly owned by Sen. Chuck Hagel, another prominent Republican.

Conflict of interest? Noooooo....

Public Beta Test in 13 Days...

[chickenwing]

Great, I live in Alameda County, CA where I remember Diebold machines being used in the last election. Now we have the recall coming up, so I guess we will just have to have some kind of blind faith that our votes are counting. I suppose if the results are other than to be expected from this more liberal area, it will raise some eyebrows.

The horrible thing is, that this is really far below the general public's radar. I find it extremely amusing that we had a court battle over how reliable punch cards are, when electronic voting may be far worse.

The problem is that the general public is very computer illiterate, and have been pretty much been conditioned to accept bugs and viruses as normal. At the same time, strangely, computers seem to be viewed as infallible.

It is very importaint for Democracy that people are able to be able to see and verify that their votes are counted.

My previous experience with the Diebold machines left me more puzzled than anything. Where was my vote counted, on the card that I put in the machine, in the machine itself, or both? Were the votes transmitted via phone, wireless, or physically transported to a centeral location? I don't know for sure, and I'm sure regular people off the street were more puzzled. Then again, maybe the thought never crossed their mind.

Good news!

[gad_zuki!]

Now hackers can use this to get rid of Bush and put in whoever is willing to part ways with the DMCA and the Patriot act.

Faux News election night:

"And the results are in for the popular election, Jane"

"75 million votes for..wait.. who the fuck is Lawrence Lessig?"

"I would say he's our new President, Steve."

Diebold also makes a system using paper ballots

[lkk17]

Diebold makes (at least) two systems: AccuVote-TS (touch screen) and AccuVote-OS (Optical Scan).

I live in Boston, where we had a City Council primary yesterday. Boston has just switched to the AccuVote-OS system. Here's how that system worked:

I voted on a PAPER BALLOT by shading an oval with a black marker (any color but red will do). Then I fed my ballot into a box about the size of a personal laser printer, which (presumably) scanned it immediately and kept it. The box had what looked like a modem cord hanging out of one side.

I am NOT comfortable having my vote disappear into a system driven by code that is not available for public scrutiny. But I feel better about this than about the touch-screen Diebold system being discussed by most of these posts, because it uses paper ballots that could be re-counted if necessary.

Small correction: link to memos, not source code

[BevHarris]

I found the source code on their wide open web site (using the google search engine) in January.

The memos were sent to me by an insider, and I just got them 2 1/2 weeks ago.

This is important, because one is similar to software piracy (though debatable, because they are under some obligation to protect things if they want to call them trade secrets, and no one in their right mind would want to pirate this system, called "junk shit" by their own technicians, to resell it.

The memos, though, are just internal communications that were leaked, and once leaked and public, which they certainly are by now, when used only for fair use reasons in the public interest, the legal issues are quite different.

They've been sending unencrypted results for years

[BevHarris]

and you'll be happy to know they can do this by land line modem, wireless modem or cell phone.

Missed observations

[DaEMoN128]

The reports deal strictly with the flaws in the current electronic voting system. I know for a fact that there is no operating system that cannot be hacked in one way or another. With that in mind, one needs to remember that there are external systems that can help secure. Examples of these are using firewalls and access lists on standard computer networks. There are several things that need to be taken into account when it comes to security. 1. Security at the user interface. (sitting at the machine) 2. Ability to access the machine remotely. 3. Transmission medium. 4. Level of encryption used. Security at the user interface should be a relative easy fix. Ability to access the machines remotely can also be fixed easily. All it takes is using a dedicated fiber backbone, or using encrypted channels. Transmission medium must be considered in conjuntion with the second and fourth point of consideration. The last is where my personal expierence comes into play. I know of no cellular phones that use 128bit encryption. I also know that it takes a long time for a very strong computer (read a beowulf cluster) to crack a good encryption algorithim. Using something like double encryption with different size keys goes a long way. Pair that with using multiplexed signals and you have gone further. You can label me a troll all you wish. Hell I don't care. I do know that I can use proper security measures and secure any os from the outside. I could even do this over wifi (wouldnt want to do to bandwidth considerations though). I agree that a paper print out would be a good additional step, but you can rest assured that if someone really wants to protect this data, it can and will be no matter what the limitations of the actual voting machines limitations are. Dont believe me, email me. Alan.Dike@us.army.mil

Diebold's CEO is a big Republican Donor

[ianscot]

Salon's article referred to the Cleveland Plain Dealer's earlier story on this:

"in August, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that Walden O'Dell, the CEO of Diebold, is a major fundraiser for President Bush. In a letter to fellow Republicans, O'Dell said that he was "COMMITTED TO HELPING OHIO DELIVER ITS ELECTORAL VOTES TO THE PRESIDENT NEXT YEAR."

The internal memos from Diebold (they get referred to from Salon) show a shockingly cavalier chief engineer 'managing' the security concerns of various clients, steadily resisting the idea of even password protecting the .mdb file (.mdb file!?!) so that just anyone couldn't overwrite audit logs. Nothing overtly political in those memos, though, thank God.

Still -- how does it affect the credibility of any (new, or old) voting system for the people overseeing it to be acknowledged partisans? Imagine a Florida 2000 in which there were no physical records, and in which the systems that counted votes were frighteningly insecure and had been programmed by a company headed by a partisan figure. We already had more than enough partisan elements there -- the brother who happens to be governor, the Supreme Court justice who has a wife on Bush's transition team, the different standards for counting absentee ballots in different counties, and so on.

The thing about those memos is, they really show the states to be one more relatively uninformed client of an IT company. They'll buy the FUD of the Diebold person as long as he sounds assured enough, you know? Even when it comes to something as obvious as "I double-clicked the file of votes and it opened with no password, is that bad?" Which is all the more reason to be sure you're dealing with someone who has no conflict of interest, right?

Re:Diebold's CEO is a big Republican Donor

[catfood]

...steadily resisting the idea of even password protecting the .mdb file...

I don't have a big problem with this part of it. He resisted the idea of password-protecting the .mdb file because it wouldn't do any good. His explicit argument was that you'd still have to give the password to the election officers and the results would be just as insecure as before. What he didn't mention was also that it doesn't take much to reverse-engineer the password out of an .mdb file anyway.

I'd be more concerned if they were talking about password-protecting the .mdb files as if it were a good thing.

More redactions than for Carnivore report

[mencik]

I find it very interesting that the State of Maryland redacted almost anything of value from the report that it released. In contrast, the Department of Justice redacted only 1 line from the Carnivore report. The voting report as posted tells very little about what was really found. Perhaps there should be some public call for the unredacted version. Maybe the Baltimore Sun can do a FOIA request.

Voting Procedures not analyzed

[mencik]

The SAIC team specifically excluded the procedures for voter identification, registratoin, etc., from their report. That is unfortunate. One of the biggest problems in Maryland is that you can vote without providing any kind of identification. No driver's license, voter registration card, or anything else.

Let's suppose you are a pollster for one of the major parties. You get a list of the registered voters for the other party. You call and ask questions like, "Do you plan to vote?" and "Whom do you plan to vote for?", just like any other poll. However, what you are doing is compiling a list of those that don't plan on voting. You then get a bunch of people to go to the various precincts and vote as those people. If you do it early enough, even if the real person does actually show up, it won't be until after the fakes have already voted for them. You can cast lots of illegal ballots that way. If the real person does show up and is told they have already voted, they can prove their identity and cast a provisional ballot, subject to investigation. If there are only a few of those, it probably won't affect the outcome and there won't be any investigation. If for some reason, there are a lot of those, it will throw the election results into chaos and probably force a new election. The liklihood of anyone getting caught is almost nil because of the lack of identification, surveillence cameras, or anything else that could be used to ensure that only those leagally registered can vote, and then can only vote as themselves.

Computer voting in Brazil

[Captain Bobo]

Hi. My boyfriend (from Rio) told me about the computer voting system they used in Brazil's recent presidential election. Portable machines (with no internet connection) that compliled results & burned to a CD. These CDs were carted (by heavy security) to a central location where the totals were all tallied. (Don't know what software or OS they used for the machines.) From most accounts, the system worked extremely smoothly and was very accurate.