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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.'"
from the article: "The core of our American democracy is the right to vote," Shelley said. "Implicit in that right is the notion that that vote be private, that vote be secure, and that vote be counted as it was intended when it was cast by the voter."
In my thinking this should mean the source code should be opened to the public to ensure continued trust in the system. "Trust us, we're the government" doesn't carry any weight these days.
Trolling is a art,
Sometimes the most advanced and easiest way of doing something isn't the best. I'll take pen+paper sign-in and handle-pull voting machines, thank you very much.
I got a +5, Troll
So what exactly is the problem with the way the rest of the civilized world does elections? (i.e. pen and paper and counting by hand)
It works, it has a paper-trail, any idiot understands the ballots, there are no hanging chads, and the entire voting system is entirely political and not commercia... oh, I see.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
That we hear about this from Wired, as opposed to CNN? MSNBC? New York Times? Washington Post? Fox News? (well, the last is a rheotical question).
My point is, what does it take for the mainstream press to pick up on this?!?!?!?
Since the current government is committed to increasing efficiency wherever possible, the following plan will be pursued:
1) Get 75,000 WinCE-based Diebold machines built (and paid for!)
2) Send them to India and have lower-cost labour do the "voting"
Makes stealing elections MUCH more cost-effective!
Think about it, it is just a bunch of Yahoos that want to secure their status in power, and to that they need to subvert checks and balances, subvert the will of the people, etc, etc.
There is no reason to trust Diebold, for that matter. It is a corporation that has been contracted to change the way we vote, and the way we are counted.
Four more years of Bush...
I'm not an American so pardon my ignorance: are these voting machines in states/counties with political leanings which normally wouldn't support Bush? Fuel my conspiracy theories.
Trolling is a art,
Walden O'Dell, head of Diebold Election Systems, wrote a letter to Republican contributors in August that said "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
Maybe there really was much basis for his confidence ....
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
Of course, if the conspiracy-theorists are correct and the company is a front for the RNC to control election results, or the company is in the business of selling results to the highest bidder, you'll be risking your life. Techno-warfare for the protection of our democracy.
The often suggested idea that we return to paper ballots misses an aspect of US elections that would make such thing difficult, namely the complexity of our elections. Although the national offices get most of the attention, ballots may include 20-100 other things to vote on. Everything from state representatives down to obscure changes in county and city charters that most don't even take the time to read.
These ballots have always been tedious to count by hand. Perhaps we could outsource the hand-counting to some third world country.
Woverly Harris Gooch, IV CTO American Fire and Bomb, LLC
What's the big deal? These guys sound like everyday, ordinary CEOs to me.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
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.
Planting cash machine weaknesses (or more likely: profiting from accidental weakness which they get to know about) allows them to obtain quicker and more anonymous rewards than tampering with elections would.
An obviously fake high-stakes election might lead to a thorough investigation, which might not only land the politician that profitted from it in hot water, but also his minions at Thiefold.
However, nobody would make as much fuss about cash machines that occasionnally spit out too much if the right cheat-code is punched.
Polls are much more efficient. For example, Howard Dean is the democratic nominee and nobody had to waste their time voting, electronic or not.
"Of course, this is just a television poll which is not legally binding. Unless proposition 304 passes; and we all pray it will."
-Kent Brockman
/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
It's good that this is being reported on Wired, but now that the situation has escalated to a company actually clearly violating federal election laws (uncertified software), employing former felons in information sensitive positions, and meeting each and every one of the tests to show method, motive and opportunity to commit election fraud, why isn't this making the front page of the NY Times and Post the same day? Why isn't CNN already reporting on this? Where's USA today? Where's Peter Jennings?
Who is John Cabal?
The point of the acquisition of media, or the concentration of media power, is to influence the electorate.
And no greater influence can be held over the electorate than replacing them outright with programmable machines.
So basically what you are asking for is to have the same people who aspire to control the electorate to call attention to their efforts at achieving even greater control over the electorate.
It's just not going to happen.
They see where America is going. They see the exodus of jobs going overseas that is to come (what we've seen to date is nothing), and they realize that the result will inevitably be the electorate veering hard to the left. And since they can take all their capital with them overseas that would be fine, except for one thing: the U.S. military.
They can't simply cede America to a reactionary leftist because there's no telling what kind of retribution would be exacted.
So they do this instead.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
exactly. A car may have power-assisted brakes and steering, but the power systems are not required to be operational. they are nice to have and make life easier, but if they cut out you can rely on your own muscle to continue functioning in an emergency.
So sure, go to electronic voting for fast initial tallies, clearer voter instructions etc, but definitely have your human-readable paper ballots as backups and for spot-checks.
the stakes are so high in certain elections that fraud attempts are already commonplace and guaranteed.
Votes were never meant to be pure virtual. Use a touchscreen to help a voter make their paper ballots, but always print a paper ballot and drop it into the ballot box. It's okay to have machines count those paper ballots, but what we learned in Florida 2000 is that the paper ballot must be clearly human readable too. That way, manual recounters don't have any ballots where the voter's intent is questionable, and voters can read their ballot on the way to the box, and if it doesn't say what they want it to say they can hand tear it up and try again.
THE next election will be done by diebold, and the election after that will be by a bunch of angry americans with rifles. the revolution is comming my frends, this is the beginning, bush lost the last election, and he is still our president, now it will be easyer to hide the next election resuts and put whoever you want in power next. im not advocating to own a gun, because they will get rid of those people first but at least make sure you know how to use one. because if you have any sense and dignity, you will need to in the next ten years.
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
It's interesting and disappointing to note how these stories are not picked up by the mainstream media.
Or at least, not yet.
All it's going to take is enough public sentiment against Diebold to change this situation... and this can only happen if msnbc, cbsnews, washpost, foxnews, latimes, et al pick this up.
I wonder what they're doing in the cash machine world that hasn't yet come to light?
>Yes, it's technology, so in that sense it may be of interest to nerds, but why front page stories about every single minor event that occurs WRT e-voting several times per week ?
w s&new_topic=8
3) Oh, and don't forget that along with the uncertified software on the Diebold machines in California, and the felons on the payroll reported in this sotry there are apparently some irregularities with certification records from the 2002 election in Georgia where Max Cleland was defeated (despite his having lead the all the polls up the election).
w s&new_topic=4
What's more basic and important to a democracy than voting? The message that this equipment and the companies involved are questionable doesn't seem to be getting out to the major media as much as it should. This is cheap publicity and many Slashdotters feel strongly about the issue. That by itself should be enough but if you want more detail or excuse: 1. The Diebold machine's software seems to have been designed to make fraud easier:
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/scoop/S00065.htm
Any competetant secretary who knows MS Access could jimmy this software without much help at all.
2. One of the other two companies that makes voting machines, ES&S, is owned in part by a Republican senator, Chuck Hegel, who was elected Senator two years after Nebraska bought his machines. He didn't see fit to disclose his substantial interest in ES&S, or the fact that he had formerly been chairman and CEO of this company in his FEC filings. Moreoever, there was an attempt to supress the publication of a story on this topic by a Republican political lawyer.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=Ne
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=Ne
Don't you think that important criteria chosing the vendor for voting machinery should include the appearance of trustworthiness, and that the machine's be designed with security in mind and audited by software industry accepted outside experts? With the voting machine companies that appearance is entirely to the contrary, and the every reputable expert that has looked at them has concluded that they don't meet basic security criteria. Rather than attempting to remedy these shortcomings they've hired PR companies to spin the news.
read any issue of 2600 and think about e-voting, then go have a heart-to-heart with your elected representatives, especially if they are democratic as the democrats intend to involve from-home e-voting in the upcoming democratic primaries.
.016 years, or perhaps a modest six days. consider that humans need to sleep, and you have eighteen days. count breaks, errors, and certain numbers having to count the same switch at the same time to verify it, and you have a multiply of that, perhaps exceeding a month. now pay them all or otherwise convince them to spend all their time for one month counting microscopic switches. now consider that you will have to either print and provide for them on paper, or have them record on paper, the status of the switches to be verified. now accomodate the 1,000,000 vote-counters. you already have all the materials you need to have done the ballot by classic ballot means and also at the very least quadrupled the expenses. i urge you to ditch the computer junk and ask people to turn out to the booths, instead.'
'governor, this is a simple 64mbyte ram module. there are sixty-four million groups of eight switches in here. if you count each of these groups one per second, it would take you over two years. now consider that each little individual switch of on and off has to be verified. one switch per second, this would take you sixteen years, and would total more seconds than there are american citizens, almost twice as many. and this, just to count one storage device, dozens of which would be required to actually do the job of recording indexes, names, addresses, signatures and social security numbers, and other data that are collected in current ballots in order to ensure fair elections. there would have to be more storage, as well, to keep logs of all the electronic transactions required in order make sure the processes were secure and retractable, for the purpose of tracking down any offenders. now this task of sixteen years to count every switch in this chip has been multiplied by dozens, perhaps hundreds or even thousands. you may find enough volunteers to reduce the time required, but now reduce the volunteers, in the case of just 1,000 such citizens, by the requirement of ability to run an electron-scanning microscope and to work steadily at the task for as many as sixteen years. now find 10,000 electron-scanning microscope-operating humans who can work without stopping to eat, sleep, or drink for a year and a half and you're approaching the end of your problem. now find 1,000,000 such citizens and the work has been reduced to
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
He's not a manager, he is a domain expert.
"If God created us in his own image we have more than reciprocated." - Voltaire
I can't fault them for folks already in place at Global Election Systems (GES) when they acquired the company at the beginning of 2002. Nor do I believe that folks with a criminal history should be barred from IT careers. Someone with expertise in large scale fraud could be very helpful, if not invaluable, in finding exploits in systems you're trying to secure.
However, a development and management staff comprised of numerous folks with experience in stock fraud, money laundering, smuggling, cracking and grand larceny certainly calls into question the legitimacy of the projects they've worked on. The Diebold spokesdrone said that a few of them left at the time of acquisition, but did not say if any remained working at Diebold.
My own opinion is that Diebold itself is a criminal enterprise whose thin facade of trustworthiness has been torn down to expose the company's true character.
This calls into question not only Diebold's election systems, but all of their products including their ubiquitous ATM machines. Who knows how many of those have been cracked or if there's an ongoing fraudulent scheme (beyond ATM withdrawl fees) by Diebold to defraud Joe and Jane Citizen of their hard-earned cash.
Based on Diebold's behaviour, I don't think that that sounds terribly crazy.
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.
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.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
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.
--
If R is the set of all sets which don't contain themselves, does R contain itself?
Why not make some e-voting software that is open source. Run it on linux, or one of the BSDs. Instead of whining for Diebold to open the source (they won't) try making your own. I'm not a good enough programmer, but I'm sure someone here is.
Not a sentence!
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!!!
I had a sarcastic answer lined up but this is too important.
The current situation in the United States makes it trivial for certain organizations to undetectably modify the vote. The fact that you don't see this is, itself, sufficient evidence that the process needs to be investigated.
Let me put the current US process in pencil-and-paper terms for you:
- The administration has hired some private individuals to be "vote counters". There is no public oversight of this hiring process.
- The vote counters collect all the ballots, count them secretly and burn the ballots. There is no public oversight of the opening, counting or burning process.
- Then they announce the results.
If this were any country except the US what would you say that the odds are that the elections are honest?
Oh yeah, and the CEOs of those companies are Bush "Pioneers". Meaning they have raised over $100,000 for the Bush election committee.
Here's the process:
1) Fund raiser collects a bunch of money for Bush.
2) Fund raiser is rewarded with legislation forcing municipalities to buy the equipment from said fundraiser.
3) Fund raiser profits AND directly begins manipulating the election for said president.
4) Fund raiser is further rewarded with jobs from third parties.
The bitch is that most of this is perfectly legal.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Because I have seen a great deal of studies that "prove" he won, that "prove" he lost, and that say it is impossible to determine without the courts releasing the information needed to know the exact count.
There are too many ways to estimate this, and none are 100% accurate. But what *is* 100% certain is that Bush prevented the count from being made more accurate than the original. Now, why would he do that? Because he *already* won the first count! It doesn't matter whether the recount would have gone in his favor--he chose *not* to count more accurately specifically because doing so would have reduced his chance of winning.
It's not really that suprising that he wanted to win. But it is disgusting that he cared less about the votes than he did about winning.
-Dan
I think electronics should just be used to make things easier and clearer. Here is how I would envision a voting system:
You come in and a touch screen given you a choice of language options. You then enter your information to confirm you are elegable to vote. The system then has you vote on everything that is of issue at the particular vote. When you're done, it shows you your choices and asks if you'd like to revise them. Once you are happy, it does two things:
1) Submits your results electronically to the central system.
2) Prints you a ticket that you then give to the poll worker, that is handled as current paper ballots are.
Now, the central electronic voting information is used to get immediate results, similar to exit polls. It will be possible ot see in realtime the election is going, and also know who won immediatly after. However, that will not be definitive. The election will not be officially declared until the paper tickets are tabulated. In the event of a discrepancy, the paper rules.
In this way we could get the ease of use and instant response of an electronic system, but not ahve to worry if it is being tampered with. If someone hacks the central system, it confuses eairly results, but doesn't change the final outcome.
Here in Oregon we have the mail in ballot. Counting happens quickly enough and the costs appear to be in line with voter expectations.
Turnout is somewhat of a problem on some issues, but the tax related elections are seeing good results. (hmmm)
Another interesting side-effect is related to the political messaging. Voters can commit to a vote anytime after they get their ballots. Maybe it's me, but I hear more political discource over a longer period of time because of this. You can't just blast your message and time it to get votes, you have to keep up the efforts.
Anyway, I am not so sure the paper really is that costly. The counting can be as distributed as is needed to get the job done and we have plenty of people. Isn't a fair system worth a bit of work? The cost issue is really a non-starter. There are always going to be plenty of retired people willing to do their part to contribute to society in a positive way. Let 'em do it! (Lots of them if we need that.) I just am not sure complexity is an issue given the ready supply of workers for the task.
Seems to me these electronic systems (obvious flaws aside) are a way to get out of the work necessary to run a democratic society. It is almost as if the spin is marginalizing voting in a bad way.
None of this is hard and it all matters more than we know. A bit of work a few times a year properly distributed is not too costly and keeps some important civics lessons in mind at the same time. Speeding the process in order to get onto bigger and better things strikes me as hasty and unwise...
One other thought along these lines. I am not sure we want elections that are too fast and easy. The current effort required to hold an election is a nice check against rapid change. Now you could argue that rapid change is what we need today, and I would agree with you. But, we must also consider the effect of too many elections. It takes time to see how the results affect society. We could end up with a political race condition of sorts with the American people suffering as a result while groups take advantage of that...
Even though I am a technical person, I reject electronic voting altogether at this point. There are too many issues with the process and its connotations for me to endorse it. I like the mail in system, but that is clearly not the way things are going to go, so...
Use the machines to assist in making a paper ballot, even grab quick stats from them to make polls easier or more timely, but that must be it. The will of the people must be recorded on media in human readable format.
Go for the simple solution, sell the civic duty to enough folks to get the work done in a timely manner and then move on to bigger and better things.
Just had another thought. We could do a lot better job of collating and publishing the relevant information for folks to read and understand via electronic means. I find it frustrating to read the voters pamplet only to learn enough to then go seek the actual language in question. The paid arguments are lame these days when anyone can comment. We should have discussion boards and public awareness of them, so people can engage the issues with greater fidelity than we do today. (I know there are problems with this, but the idea is sound.)
Re: outsourcing! That's funny as hell. We Americans have realized we don't have time to count our votes, we are too busy shopping and writing laws for the rest of you! So why not just be the good little bitches you are and count 'em up for us. In fact, you can just consider these votes yours because we are going to force the results via treaty anyway. --Right!
Blogging because I can...