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.'"

Comments

Diebold completely at fault?

[the_skywise]

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.

Re:Diebold completely at fault?

[leftie]

Wrong. Jeffrey Dean and John Elder are still working for Diebold. Dean was given 24/7 access to the King Co. elections office and compter room in order to program the Diebold software. Diebold presently has Elder managing a division of the company working in elections, too. http://www.blackboxvoting.com/bbv/1216presskit.pdf

Radio

[Triv]

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

Please support the Open Voting Consortium

[laird]

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.

Can't post this too many times

[skyfaller]

Just a reminder to check out the Diebold memos for yourself. Find some more juicy stuff and get it in the news!

Bill Could Rule Out Open Source Voting Software

[TheShrike]

Risks Digest is reporting that Sen. Barbara Boxer (D - CA) will introduce a bill requiring stringent background checks on all electronic voting company employees who work with voting software.

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.