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Observer Pans Touchscreen Voting Test
riversidevoter continues: "WinEDS, the program that is used to count votes, was only tested in a pre-election mode. The software was not tested in the configuration that it would be in on election day.
In addition to that, people signed a form that said that they had verified the results of the test before the test had finished running. Mischelle Townsend, the Riverside County Registrar of Voters, told Salon that the form that people signed was just an attendance form. But the form clearly states 'We the undersigned declare that we observed the process of
logic and accuracy testing of voting equipment performed by the Riverside County
Registrar of Voters, as required by law and that all tests performed resulted in accurate
voting of all units tested, including both touchscreen and absentee systems.'
You can see a copy of the Salon article here. You can see a copy of the form that people signed here.
I also believe that the observation group that witnessed the test was given a misleading description of Sequoia's system. For example, the fact that the votes are transferred from the DRE to a SQL Server database to be counted was never fully disclosed to all the members of the group.
Also, the sheer number of times that the phrase 'proprietary operating system' was used, among other things, helped to create the impression that Sequoia's system is not as reliant on Microsoft Windows as it really is.
I have created a website about this issue; please take a look at it.
On the website you can find my report on what happened that day (which outlines several problems I haven't mentioned in this posting) as well as some supporting documents. There is a letter and a note from Mischelle Townsend in which she mentions mailing the results to people or having the test results be picked up 'afterwards'...."
If they don't do it right on the first try, e-voting won't ever take off.
Just when you thought FloridaGate 2000 was out of everyone's mind, we bring you CaliforniaGate 2004: Rise of the Machines
The Good students at have decided this will not stand.
Help fight continental drift.
First, after you vote, a 2-D bar code is printed. That code contains a record of your vote, with an encryption of the machine you voted at and your selected key. Nothing big, 4 digits. The critical part is the hardware key used on the machine.
A copy of this bar code is printed at the same time inside the system.
If there was an audit, randomly call people to determine their key. Although you could decrypt it, it's better than just leaving the votes lying around. Then, verify the accuracy.
Since I have a printed record at the time of the voting, I can use it to verify my votes. The local voting office could decrypt it, and then I can verify my votes.
Thoughts on this approach are very much welcome.
...tizzyd
I wish I could get user acceptance sign-off before I started testing.
This electronic voting is the most serious threat to America that we have seen in our lifetimes. Most here realize that no computer voting system can be secure without serious efforts that are not even being hinted at here. Compromising the secrecy of the vote offers many ways to secure these sysetms. A more reasonable compromise would be a voter-verified paper ballot that is re-inserted into the machine.
Since the most basic steps to provide security are not provided here, it is clear that the intention is to make a system that has completely compromised the validity of US elections. For some reason the mainstream media has not taken note of how serious an issue this is. The people involved in the current electronic voting plans can not be trusted AT ALL. They either want to subvert the voting process themselves, or want to create a system that is easy to subvert at a vastly lower cost than current systems.
What can be done to raise awareness of this issue? How can people be convinved that we need elections that are not trivial to subvert? Is the American public so apathetic as to make this an impossible task? Are we completely doomed?
Voting technology doesn't need to be any more complicated than that.
Sure, it may take a few hours to count all the votes, but they're verifiably countable and recountable, and seem good enough for most of the other countries in the world. Why does there have to be an electronic solution to this non-problem?
Read the diebold memos:
/200207/msg00090.html
/200003/msg00034.html
/200009/msg00109.html
/200101/msg00068.html
/200302/msg00069.html
http://why-war.com/memos/s/lists/
Search the diebold memos:
http://why-war.com/memos/cgi-bin/search.pl
MEMO EXCERPTS
"Elections are not rocket science. Why is it so hard to get things right! I have never been at any other company that has been so miss [sic] managed."
source: http://why-war.com/memos/s/lists/announce.w3archiv e/200110/msg00002.html
"I have become increasingly concerned about the apparent lack of concern over the practice of writing contracts to provide products and services which do not exist and then attempting to build these items on an unreasonable timetable with no written plan, little to no time for testing, and minimal resources. It also seems to be an accepted practice to exaggerate our progress and functionality to our customers and ourselves then make excuses at delivery time when these products and services do not meet expectations."
source: http://why-war.com/memos/s/lists/announce.w3archiv e/200110/msg00001.html
"I feel that over the next year, if the current management team stays in place, the Global [Election Management System] working environment will continue to be a chaotic mess. Global management has and will be doing the best to keep their jobs at the expense of employees. Unrealistic goals will be placed on current employees, they will fail to achieve them. If Diebold wants to keep things the same for the time being, this will only compound an already dysfunctional company. Due to the lack of leadership, vision, and self-preserving nature of the current management, the future growth of this company will continue to stagnate until change comes."
source: http://why-war.com/memos/s/lists/announce.w3archiv e/200112/msg00007.html
"[T]he bugzilla historic data recovery process is complete. Some bugs were irrecoverably lost and they will have to be re-found and re-submitted, but overall the loss was relatively minor."
source: http://why-war.com/memos/s/lists/support.w3archive
"28 of 114 or about 1 in 4 precincts called in this AM with either memory card issues "please re-insert", units that wouldn't take ballots - even after recycling power, or units that needed to be recycled. We reburned 7 memory cards, 4 of which we didn't need to, but they were far enough away that we didn't know what we'd find when we got there (bad rover communication)."
source: http://why-war.com/memos/s/lists/support.w3archive
"If voting could really change things, it would be illegal."
source: http://why-war.com/memos/s/lists/support.w3archive
"I need some answers! Our department is being audited by the County. I have been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16022 when it was uploaded. Will someone please explain this so that I have the information to give the auditor instead of standing here "looking dumb"."
source: http://why-war.com/memos/s/lists/support.w3archive
"[...] while reading some of Paranoid Bev's scribbling."
source: http://why-war.com/memos/s/lists/support.w3archive
"Johnson County, KS will be doing Central Count for their mail in ballots. They will also be processing these ballots in advance of the closing of polls on election day. They would like to log into the Audit Log an entry for Previewing any Election Total Reports. They need this, to prove to the media, as well as, any candidates & lawyers, that they did not view or print any Election Results before the Polls closed. ***However, if there is a way that we can disable the reporting functionality, that would be even better.***" (emphasis added)
source: http://why-war.com/memos/s/lis
Lead by none other than Martin Luther King III.. cfm?itemid=14993
http://www.workingforchange.com/activism/petition
There are 10 kinds of people in the world; those that understand binary and those that do not.
Just think, eventually we'll all be getting pop-up ads telling us who to vote for, while we're in the booths!
Here's an idea to make the process accountable, without requiring a mound of paper at the voting site.
Later on, a text file is made publically accessible with a row for every vote. Each row would have only the hash and the person they voted for. The algorithm for computing the hash would also be published.
Anyone who is interested in confirming that their vote was properly recorded can look up their hash in the text file to make sure it lists the person they voted for.
Anyone who has a spreadsheet can do a recount.
Any third party with a bit of cryptography knowledge can write a web app for people to confirm that their hash was computed properly.
This method has the advantage of remaining completely anonymous and completely accountable.
Any thoughts?
I release this idea into the public domain.