California Grills Diebold Over E-Voting Foul-Ups

orthogonal writes "Electronic voting machine producer Diebold admitted today that 'thousands' of voters were turned away from the polls during the Super Tuesday Presidential Primary because of flaws in Diebold's machines. Diebold Election Services Inc. president Bob Urosevich said 'We were caught', and answered 'yes' when asked 'Weren't [California voters] actually disenfranchised?' Today, California officials may recommend decertifying some or all of Dielbold's machines for the November General Election." Reader TargetBoy adds: "Diebold knowingly used uncertified software in California elections. Especially interesting is the comment that, 'The law firm's memos reflect a corporate defense firm on a $500,000-a-month campaign to protect Diebold.' Wonder how much it would cost to just fix the problems?" Apparently India is having evoting problems of its own: purple writes "The world's largest democracy is in the midst of a 4-month election marathon. Except this time around the whole thing is run electronically. And, surprise surprise, things seem to not be working perfectly. Some polling booths have been ordered to re-poll due to malfunctions in the electronic voting machines. In another article, 191 voting booths were ordered to re-poll. Other polling locations seem to be operating on voter lists from 2001. I suppose the good news is that these errors were caught before they could have really screwed things up."

Comments

Here's the rub

[American AC in Paris]

OK, all conspiracy theories off to the side. Forget the whole "Getting votes for the Republicn Party" bit. Ignore whatever political motivations may be surrounding Diebold at the moment. Assume that Diebold has no desire to commit or facilitate election fraud.

The simple fact is that, while Diebold does indeed care about producing accurate voting results, they are more concerned with making money. If Diebold is forced to choose between increasing their profit and making the system better, they'll choose profit.

If you put voting machines in the hands of the private sector, the private sector will try to maximize profit. Corners will be cut. There simply isn't any way to avoid this, so long as the people making the machines are doing so to make money off the venture.

So long as the design and development of voting systems is left to the private sector, voters will be disenfranchised for the sake of profit. That's all there is to it.

Re:Here's the rub

[corbettw]

Not to excuse the incompetent greedy fucks at Diebold, but they're only a symptom of the larger problem. The real problem is that the government types who are making decisions about going to evoting know fuck-all about how computers work, and are not interested/capable of any real oversight (the "magic box" can't be wrong, can it?). Couple that with the natural human tendency to get as much return on as little investment as possible, and it's almost as bad as setting up a dingo farm next to a day care center.

Afterall, consider that Diebold is one of the largest makers of ATMs in the world. Ever wonder why they can make ATMs that don't screw up your checking account balance every time you withdraw funds? Simple: banks are accountable to their customers, share holders, and various government agencies to not screw up people's finances. If someone went to the ATM and it reported they only had $18,181 (a reference to a previously reported bug on the upper limits of counted votes), when in fact they had ten times that much, there'd be a huge outcry (if the reverse happened, the bank would eventually catch it, and again there'd be a huge outcry, at least internally to the vendor). So, again, the problem isn't that Diebold is greedy (which they are) or stupid (which they are), but that the people to whom they are directly accountable (the various county registrars) have no clue what the hell they're doing.

Re:Here's the rub

[Catbeller]

but to make a buck on a cheaper system

That doesn't track logically. The system already costs $5000 per voting machine. If the printer was added, they'd simply add another few thousand for the work and hardware. Memos have surfaced taht confirm this: they were instructed to charge HIGH to add that capability, if it came to it.

No, from the minutes of a meeting inadvertently attended by a publisher, and from justing oogling Diebold's 500K/month legal fund, itcan only be said Diebold's ONLY aim is to prevent the addition of printed ballots for verification purposes.

So they don't want an audit trail. Now, why?

They know that if the system is audited, ie a recount made and results from counting paper matched to election tallies, the numbers won't match up. OR, they are making sure the machines can secretly alter election vote totals, and don't want it known.

Since there is no profit motive, it must be incompetence, or cheating, or both.

Re:Here's the rub

[Catbeller]

Not a huge conspiracy at all. It's right out in the open. They don't want the printers. They're spending fortunes and dragging in their favorite legislators to block the audit trail.

They're not claiming it's expensive, or complicated, or anything logical. They claim it's not necessary.

Now, we've plenty of data at this point, from negative tallies in Indiana to system tests by computer scientists. The tallies are not working even by Dielbold's standards. The scientists cracked the system in 5 minutes in one case, and found multiple hacks in all others that permitted them to own the voting machines, the aggregation machines, the modem communications, the voter smart cards... their conclusion: minumum effort to change vote totals at will!

Doesn't take a "conspiracy theory" to stare the truth in the face. The machines don't work as they are supposed to. The basic idea is unsound and an invitation to cheat. The system is already hacked, and the vote counts can be changed. Strange results have occured in Georgia and otherplaces: wild swings for candidates that don't match the polls. The company has fought like a rabid hyena to prevent an audit trail, even though doing so means extra profit.

I don't think the entire company is out to cheat the voters. But I find it easy to believe that either the machines don't work as advertised, or the company bigwigs may be terrified that an paper audit was run and cheating occured. I also find it humanly certain that someone in the Bush-fanatical company has it in their head to use the easy methods already known to tip a race in the Republican's favor. Why not? It's untraceable.

In any case, extremely robust printers are available for use,so fallibilty of hardware isn't an issue. Do ATM's fail to print very often? It's Diebold, they specialize in tough hardware.

Cost isn't an issue. They can charge whatever they like.

Time wasn't an issue, until they ran out the clock.

The audit trail IS the issue for them. They fundamentally deny they need one. Their reasoning is nonexistent. They simply assert it isn't necessary.

It boils down to this: they are blocking the ability to hold recounts. They don't want recounts. There must be a reason. They are capable, can charge what they like. So... they have something they don't want known. It can onlybe that tthe possiblity exists that the recount tallies won't match the original totals. Think what kind of hell would explode if the new, bulletproof system was shown conclusively to be completely untrustworthy. It would be a scandal unlike any other, especially seeing how hard they tried to hide the problem.

Fear of esposure as incompetents or fear of exposure as the enablers of a falsely elected government, take your pick. And ALL previous elections would be invalid on the evidence!

I don't think most Americans would even care, but some would. Enough to send people to prison.

#2 pencil

[Anonymous Coward]

Complication does not equal sophistication. Sometimes, a number 2 lead pencil really does work best.

Tehnology is not the root problem here.

[Muda69]

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:Improper Apology

[Maestro4k]

• Nothing about apologizing for the problems with the product, or the fact that they didn't work. He appologizes for getting caught.

Which speaks volumes about Diebold as a company. Using the phrase "We were caught" implies they willfully put the bad machines out, etc. Having the head of the company say this makes it very hard for even the most forgiving of souls to trust them.

Hold Them All Accountable

[NickFusion]

So, Diebold gets off with a half-assed apology, sorry about yer democracy, Mate! My bad!

And nobody on the federal level is making a fuss because...hmm, now I wonder why?

And it'll probably just tool along all status quo-y until...what? Massive, undeniable fraud? Some kind of grassroots "Hack the Vote" movement?

I think it was Heinlien that said, "It may be rigged, but it's the only game in town."

So keep the pressure on, and hope it makes a difference before November.

(Where's my EFF renewal form...)