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More E-Voting SNAFUs
tassii writes "Looks like Diebold is in yet more trouble. In this article from Wired.com, an audit of the Diebold E-Voting machines revealed that the company installed uncertified software in all 17 counties that use its electronic voting equipment. While 14 counties used software that had been qualified by federal authorities but not certified by state authorities, three counties, including Los Angeles, used software that had never been certified by the state or qualified by federal authorities for use in any election. And in this article, Wired.com is reporting that at least five convicted felons secured management positions at a Diebold, including one who served time in a Washington state correctional facility for stealing money and tampering with computer files in a scheme that 'involved a high degree of sophistication and planning.'"
"But if we find that there are gross discrepancies and violations, I am prepared to go down that road," he warned. "Of course, nothing could be as gross as the thought of CmdrTaco having sex." is embedded in the text
Diebold has been criticized for donating to the Republicans, probably to get the voting contract in the first place.
Also, the Diebold CEO was quoted as saying something along the lines of 'giving the republicans the next election' and 'if voting actually made a difference, it would be outlawed'
From page 2 of the article:
"Shelley acknowledged responsibility for the failure of his own office to track what systems were in place and said changes would be made. He said he hoped the statewide review wouldn't result in the decertification of Diebold systems or the systems of other vendors."
The state board of elections did NOT audit these machines BEFORE THE ELECTION and KNOWING that Diebold installed uncertified software in past elections. Shelley also does not want the machines decertified. How can you decertify what you did not certify to begin with? And if Diebold REALLY IS in violation of their agreement (as Shelley claims) they should be cut out of the process IMMEDIATELY because they're NOT CERITIFED But...they're not... Why? (Because, just maybe this is a political witch-hunt? Naaaahhh..)
Lastly, Diebold says the "felon computer programmer" was released when Diebold acquired the company. Which means he never WORKED for Diebold. so there's no need to do a background check on him.
Some believe Diebold threw the Georgia Senate election. This article suggests how it might have been done:
5 .htm
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S0006
Many specialists remain convinced that a Republican team jiggered the vote-counting computers during the 1987 Presidential election that brought Chun's protege, Roh Tae Woo, to power.
Now, taking into concideration the election frauds in Florida, one does not need a tin-foil hat to see that voting computers will make election frauds even more easy.
Jack Hitt did a story on Diebold for This American Life a few weeks back. It's a good listen and neatly sums up all the problems with untrusted computerized voting. I know WE know what the issues are, but it's refreshing to see this out in the public eye.
A description of the show and a realaudio stream (yeah yeah, I know) is available here.
Triv
Since most of the post have been pointing out that Diebold made Republican contributions, let me balance that with what happened here in Virginia. Several voting machines "hung" (they run Windows, what do you expect). Despite the fact that it is explicitly illegal to remove voting machines from the polling place during the election, the hung machines were taken to the vendors shop. Since there was no audit trail, all the votes in those machines would be lost other wise. At the shop, the machines were "reset" while supposedly preserving the vote totals. Yeah right. Since the Democrats won, the Repulicans are filing suit over these voting irregularities.
What really made me mad was the attitude of the election supervisors I talked to months before the election. I explained the problem with voting machines with no audit trail, and trade secret software (they were proudly displaying the new machines at a fair). They explained how my fears were based on ignorance and fear of change. These machines were *computerized*, and therefore had to be better than the old way. They didn't see what good a paper trail would do, since they could print out the totals at any time. What if the machine malfunctions, or the secret code counts every third Dem vote as Rep (or vice versa)? "What are you, some kind of conspiracy nut? These machines are *computerized*. Computers are unbiased and don't make those kind of human errors." Sigh.
The problem this system is that it disenfranchises disabled people.
No it doesn't. Traditional (reliable) paper-and-pencil ballots can be used by disabled people too.
e-voting systems, for example, read to blind voters.
Around here a blind or visually-impaired person can get a cardboard template that the paper ballot slips into. The template is marked in Braille with the names on the ballot and there are cut-out holes in the template where you are to mark your X.
People with other disabilities can have a "friend" (that's the legal word used) come with them to the polling place. The "friend" fills out an affidavit and swears an oath that he will truly record the disabled person's vote as instructed by the disabled person, and not reveal it to anyone. He then accompanies the disabled person into the voting booth and marks the ballot paper as the disabled person instructs.
This CAN be done, and is being done; you can accommodate most disabilities without any need for a high-tech black hole. Really!
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
Add to that the fact that Bush has been manipulating numbers all his life in an effort to create the perception that his is competent and successful. Just take a look at the fallout that Texas have been having to deal with over the past few years due largely to fact that Bush and his friends were willing to fudge any number to generate short term profits and get him elected. With this history, a conspiracy to fix elections isn't so wild. It is not that much worse than manipulating students performance standards to the detriment of their education.
Add to that the fact that much that has happened in this administration has been planned. Of course 9/11 was not planned by the US, but caused enough problems so that the administration had a much easier time of pushing the planned tax cuts, reduction in civil liberties, and the resumption of active aggression in Iraq. For the first time Bush is really doing exactly what he wants, and is getting credit for it. He will not let such power go easily. All of his freinds who became extremely weathly during the Clinton years, are becoming obscenely weathly now. The fact that thier greed means that we don't have money for basic services are of little concern.
"Why would you need to have ballot serial numbers to prevent that?"
Well it provides a way that it can be checked which way somebody voted. However they don't strike a name off the voter's list - they just put a mark next to their name. If you are 16 or 17 you can't vote but are in the system in case you turn 18 just before an election. Once my brother (who wasn't 18 yet) was on the voter's list even though he didn't have a vote....
The way voting works (in a polling station) in the UK is thus:-
You go to the polling station, and go to the table representing your subsection of the polling district. They then ask for your address and name. They then put a mark next to your name, get a ballot paper and put a "presiding mark" on it. You then go and put an X next to the person (or persons if you have more than one vote) you wish to vote for. Then you fold the ballot paper twice and go to the ballot box. You show the presiding mark to the person by the ballot box and put it in the ballot box.
Both things are done - numbered ballot papers and checking the voter list.
Video Game cheats, hints a
If you're concerned about reliable voting in the US (and elsewhere) based on an open, auditable system, please go to http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/, read up on what they're doing, and volunteer to help out.
To quote from their web site:
The Open Voting Consortium (OVC) is a non-profit organization dedicated to the development, maintenance, and delivery of an open voting system for use in public elections.
We are currently developing free voting software to run on very inexpensive PC hardware. The OVC voting system will accommodate different languages and scoring methods, as well as voters with special needs.
We expect to be fully operational by 2005, with the certification of version 1.0 of the Open Voting software. Meanwhile, we have demonstration software under development at http://sourceforge.net/projects/evm2003, which should be ready by the end of this year.
If you want to Help make it happen, then mailto:alan@openvotingconsortium.org to send us an e-mail.
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Just a reminder to check out the Diebold memos for yourself. Find some more juicy stuff and get it in the news!
Free Speech, Free Software, Free Culture
Propenents of Open Source solutions for electronic voting systems should be concerned about this. I see no mention of this at Boxer's website, so it's hard to say exactly how this might be worded. But clearly, the process of performing and verifying such a vetting could be problematic for a distributed, volunteer development effort. Would it be just the "official" maintainers who would be subject to such constraints, or would such requirements require that patches submitted by non-vetted contributors be rejected purely on those grounds? My concern is that voting software should be evaluated and put into use on technical grounds, and in the pursuit of using the best available methods, we shouldn't be placing barriers into place which preclude the selection of well-written software.
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If R is the set of all sets which don't contain themselves, does R contain itself?
I know this isn't exactly THE mainstream press, but the Sacremento Bee printed this article, which is fairly informative. It also makes someintersting comparisons to ATM machines to illustrate why these machines should be taken far more seriously.
"It does seem a bit suspicious if he's making that statement to one side and not the other though, but I don't think it's a smoking gun."
He is a lifelong republican, he was writing the the republican donors.
War is necrophilia.
I would say that the only gaurantee of accuracy is tht the process needs to be transparent enough for anyone to observe, understand, and validate.
I don't think the "paper receipt" concept solves anything. The counting is still done ELECTRONICALLY. If the receipt is held by the voter, there is no practical way to go back and audit the election. Sure I can give the voter a form saying WHO they voted for, but any audit would require users bringing their receipts back. Somehow, I think they as likely to end up in the trash as ATM receipts are.
The only PRACTICAL solution is to PRINT the ballot in human readable form. There would be no pure electronic count. The voter would verify their choices using the printout, NOT the screen. An incorrect ballot would be shredded and the voter could then change their selections.
Should the printed ballots utilize barcodes????
NO. People cannot read barcodes. They have no way to validate that their choice was properly registered.
You could print BOTH. But again, the voter has no way to gaurantee that the bar code matches what is printed. If the reader uses the bar code, then votes can be effectively stolen without being noticed. An "error" in the software would effectively spoil a vote since there would be no way to determine which candidate the voter actually chose.
Should the printed ballots utilize bubble arrays????
No. Again the voter cannot validate which of the bubbles is THEIR choice without a crib. An incorrect crib could be swapped in and out of a voting booth with little notice*. Strategically doing so in the stronghold of someone else's county would effectively steal votes for another party.
Should ballots be serialize?????
Yes, ballots should be serialized so that each vote is unique. In this scenario, it would be more difficult to falsify ballots if you keep track of which ballots came from where.
Should ballots be digitally signed?????
Obviously, voters will not be able to authenticate digital signatures. That would be a machine function in the case of an audit (or recount).
But digital signatures would provide additional security when paired with:
1) The unique ballot numbers.
2) Unique key codes assigned to individual voting machines.
3) A Unique random key generated externally and entered into a machine on election day. Such a procedure for each machine could be filled as part of audit material for an election.
4) A hash of the voters choices. The hash would be part of a "receipt" that voters are issued to keep with them. It would also be part of a master list of votes that are printed as part of a machines output. During an audit, the signatures could be cross checked to detect any fraud.
How should the votes be tallied??????
The votes should be tallied using Optical Character Recognition or plain old manual counting.
Printed ballots would use standardized formats to enable easier OCR. ALL machine Unreadable ballots would be hand counted by law. Since they were printed by machines, they would NOT as ambiguous.
What if ballots turn up missing?????
If ballots are missing or mangled beyond recognition, anyone casting those votes would be able to "re-vote". The receipt containing the unique codes would be proof of when and where they voted so you would not end up with double votes. This does not violate privacy since the original vote was effectively destroyed.
Should the receipts identify the voter????
No, not explicitley. The receipts would identify the time and place voted. The voters ID would be concealed in a one way hash code that produced LOTS of duplicates. In this way, you could verify that a receipt holder did cast that vote (due to statistic inprobability).
Third parties could not collect discarded receipts and use them to revote in the event of spoiled or lost ballots. An election official could not regenerate hash codes and find out who voted for whom. The system would produce too many duplicates to match any ballot directly with the voter.
Having said all this, I think the Canadiens and Europeans are right on this issue. Plain old paper and supervision probably is the best answer.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
You can find out whether or not a person voted in a particular election, but not who that person voted for.