Flaw in Florida E-Voting Machines

An anonymous reader writes "Looks like there are more problems with the new e-voting machines. How will they ever be ready in time for the November elections?"

Comments

E-Voting safe ever?

[CptChipJew]

"These are minor technical hiccups that happen," said Hood spokeswoman Nicole DeLara. "No votes are lost, or could be lost"

Didn't they let some hackers lose on that Diebold machine and find 30k fake votes changed in a matter of minutes? Honestly, I don't think they're ready for this, if they ever will be. My grandfather can't even operate his DVD player.

In the gubernatorial election here in Cali (when Arnold got elected), they replaced the chad system with essentially the same design, but instead of punching holes, it left a really dark ink mark on the circle, which seems a lot safer to me. And this thing really flooded the ink, i touched it to my thumb just for fun and it left a pool in my fingertip. To me it really seems like a smart and simple alternative.

Though of course I expect some replies on the contrary :D

Re:Democracy?

[malus]

I can testify. My dad is a senior reporter with a local NBC affiliate, and I've clued him in to quite a few stories about our current voting machines.

His assignment editor, and more troubling, the News Director [Hi, Forrest!] have routinely ignored the story. If the story isn't about The Spiderman burglar, or some Old Lady being ripped off by a roofing company, this 'news' channel doesn't want anything to do with it.

Here's an idea for a voting machine

[slashdot_commentator]

Use keypunch encoders.

Voter goes into keypunch booth, looks at wall with each candidate assigned a number, voter types in numbers, extracts card, and (new part), sticks card into reader which displays their choices on a screen. (Doesn't like what she sees, goes back in line to punch out another card.) Voter hands in card.

You have anonymity, a paper trail, no concerns about hanging chads or mispunches, minimal maintenance, and almost no high tech specialist requirements. I wouldn't be shocked if most of this type of equipment is still manufactured and maintained.

Solution?

[t_allardyce]

Whats wrong with just attaching cheap receipt printers to every machine (they wanted to attach notebooks). Design the receipt to be visually obvious and machine readable, use paper thats atleast abit hard to forge, it could be for example just headed with a hologram sticker or water-mark or even just a unique id. Then when the voter presses ok, it prints, they are told to check it, the paper is wound up abit and the next voter comes in. Make recounts by this method mandatory for every election and the machines that read them are not made by the same company (or diebold). Advantage: You can use the existing machines, it doesnt matter how insecure they are, aslong as the paper is kept secure behind glass and then placed in a sealed box. Disadvantage: Im pretty sure the two results will disagree.

Election Systems and Software

[demachina]

It intersting to see Election Systems and Software get some bad publicity. They are actually larger than Diebold in turns of evoting. Every one is familiar with the fact Diebold's CEO is a Bush campaign bigwig in Ohio and promised to deliver Ohio for Bush.

ES&S is also excessively close to the Republicans. An excerpt from Mother Jones on them:

"While Diebold has received the most attention, it actually isn't the biggest maker of computerized election machines. That honor goes to Omaha-based ES&S, and its Republican roots may be even stronger than Diebold's. "

"The firm, which is privately held, began as a company called Data Mark, which was founded in the early 1980s by Bob and Todd Urosevich. In 1984, brothers William and Robert Ahmanson bought a 68 percent stake in Data Mark, and changed the company's name to American Information Services (AIS). Then, in 1987, McCarthy & Co, an Omaha investment group, acquired a minority share in AIS."

"In 1992, investment banker Chuck Hagel, president of McCarthy & Co, became chairman of AIS. Hagel, who had been touted as a possible Senate candidate in 1993, was again on the list of likely GOP contenders heading into the 1996 contest. In January of 1995, while still chairman of ES&S, Hagel told the Omaha World-Herald that he would likely make a decision by mid-March of 1995. On March 15, according to a letter provided by Hagel's Senate staff, he resigned from the AIS board, noting that he intended to announce his candidacy. A few days later, he did just that. "

"A little less than eight months after stepping down as director of AIS, Hagel surprised national pundits and defied early polls by defeating Benjamin Nelson, the state's popular former governor. It was Hagel's first try for public office. Nebraska elections officials told The Hill that machines made by AIS probably tallied 85 percent of the votes cast in the 1996 vote, although Nelson never drew attention to the connection. Hagel won again in 2002, by a far healthier margin. That vote is still angrily disputed by Hagel's Democratic opponent, Charlie Matulka, who did try to make Hagel's ties to ES&S an issue in the race and who asked that state elections officials conduct a hand recount of the vote. That request was rebuffed, because Hagel's margin of victory was so large."

"As might be expected, Hagel has been generously supported by his investment partners at McCarthy & Co. -- since he first ran, Hagel has received about $15,000 in campaign contributions from McCarthy & Co. executives. And Hagel still owns more than $1 million in stock in McCarthy & Co., which still owns a quarter of ES&S."

Re:3 movies and 34 books say: CORRUPTION.

[demachina]

"They'd have me believe that Bush is a completely incompetent moron who (disengage rational thought) is the mastermind behind the most nefarious and profitable corruption in world history. They continuously point to the glaring, embarrassing international goofs the White House makes while (disengage rational thought) the Bush administration is pulling off the most successful power grab in American history."

Not saying its true but what you describe is quite plausible. George W. is not one of the brightest President's we've had. He has always been a C student at best. His academic credentials, Yale and Harvard MBA are more thanks to his families power and connections than his intellectual ability. He joked recently in a commencement speech about being a C student and how far he'd gone, well most C students don't have his family connections.

Though George W. isn't very bright he does have extremely bright people pulling the strings for him which is why what you say isn't possible is. Karl Rove is the brains in the White House, he is extremely bright and ruthless. Dick Cheney is the neferious and somewhat paranoid one. It is, according to Woodward his job to think of every possible bad thing that could happen and make sure the Bush administration plans for it.

Cheney did rewrite the rules for contracting when he was defense secretary and reopened the revolving door where you work in government, where you give lucrative contracts to big companies, and then make millions when you retire from the government and go to work for the same company as he did with Halliburton. Dick Cheney was the mastermind who hollowed out the military and made it completely dependent on contractors for basic things like cooks, and then his company Halliburton has been getting all those contracts.

If you don't think the Republican party is massively corrupt you should have watched the passage of the Medicare "reform" bill. Billy Tauzin (R) rammed it through Congress and last I heard was going to work for the drug lobby who are going to get a windfall profit from it. The Medicare administrator was drawing up the cost estimates for it at the same time he was negotiating his own private sector job with the companies who were going to make out like bandits when it passed. He had the permission of the White House to job shop though it was massively corrupt to allow it. The administrator then intentionally underestimated the cost of the bill by something like a hundred billion dollars because if the real price tag had been known it never would have passed. He also threatend his subordinates who threatened to reveal the real cost before the bill passed. The Bush administration had to put out the correct numbers right after the bill had passed to everyone's dismay. That guy cost taxpayers a hundred billion dollars in exchange for a sweet multimillion dollar career/payoff. Even then the bill barely passed, lobbyists for the drug and healthcare industry were circling like sharks in the lobby of the Capitol while the debate was going on openly bribing and intimidating Congressmen to get it passed. The payoff to the drug industry was hundreds of billions in tax dollars to pay for drugs and the Medicare administration is precluded by law from negotiating fair prices. The drug companies can charge as much as they think they can get away with.

Don't get me wrong, the Democrats are almost as corrupt as the Republican's, they just send their pork in different places, but for you to stick your head in the sand and pretend like the Bush administration isn't massively corrupt is naive.

Its also basically true that the Bush administration is making one foreign relations gaffe after another. I'm pretty sure the U.S. has never been more hated and feared around the world than it is today. International polls certainly suggest this. Why is that a contradiction to the fact that the Republican's are also in the midst of one of the biggest domestic power grabs ever at home. American's seem to be a lot more gullible than most people around the world so they are falling for the Bush Administration BS while most of the rest of the world isn't.