More on the Dangers of eVoting

blamanj writes "A lot of discussion has been focused on the lack of security in electronic voting systems. What hasn't been as widely discussed, is just how tiny the voting manipulations have to be to have an effect. In this months CACM (cite, pdf of original paper is here), some Yale students show that altering only a single vote per machine would have changed the electoral college outcome of the 2000 election. Changing only two votes/machine would have flipped the results for four states."

Comments

Unrealistic

[the_mad_poster]

First of all, this "study" was done with full knowledge of the outcome of the election. While this makes for a slightly amusing statistical exercise, for it to work right, one candidate would not only have to have unrealistic access to countless voting machines, he'd have had to have guessed WHICH machines he needed unrealistic access to beforehand.

Second, this doesn't show any problem specific to electronic voting. Each of those votes in the "one vote per machine" total could have been "flipped" by countless other fraudulent activities if the aforementioned prerequisite of psychic ability had been met.

Finally - see that horse? It's dead. You can stop beating it. Electronic voting has happened, is happening, and will happen. The only way people will rise up and kill it is if (when) some massive fraud or error occurs that totally fucks the outcome of a major race.

I suppose that pointing this out to Sims is a waste of time given his history of childish antics and self-serving coniptions, but I'll do it anyway: this sort of nonsense being given face time on Slashdot just serves to stir up a bunch of clueless 16 year old zitheads who go around yelping about a real problem in an unrealistic way which just galvanizes everyone who needs to know about it against the people who actually understand the threat and have a real case to make. Congratulations, Michael. You not only continue to lower the overall level of discourse in the technical arena, you even manage to get paid for it now.

Re:Unrealistic

[demachina]

"one candidate would not only have to have unrealistic access to countless voting machines"

Uh, the people at Diebold had exactly this kind of access in California and Georgia in previous elections and all the manufacturers probably have it this time around too. Local election officials who all tend to be very partisan have it too. California is pursuing Diebold in court for precisely this kind of unauthorized access to their machines. Unrealistic indeed.

Unless there are extraordinarily rigorous procedures followed in auditing the source, doing builds controlled environment, and making sure properly signed builds are on the machines, they are constantly vulnerable to compromise. If they had a paper trail it would be less bad because you could do random audits to catch cheating. With these paperless machines you have absolutely no way to catch fraud.

You only need a compromised software load distributed across all machines. Its silly to act like some guy in black needs to go around and stuff ballots in each machine individually like they have to with good old paper ballots.

This is a very real danger. STOP TRYING TO DOWNPLAY IT.

"he'd have had to have guessed WHICH machines he needed unrealistic access to beforehand."

Both sides know exactly the places where they need to jigger the results to steal the elections. They are called swing states and two of them with huge electronic voting presence are Ohio(home of Diebold and where Diebold's execs are a key part of the Bush campaign apparatus) and Florida where the election apparatus is dominated by the President's brother and his appointed Republican secretary of state.

"Finally - see that horse? It's dead. You can stop beating it. Electronic voting has happened, is happening, and will happen."

You are so wrong. This horse is just out of the gate. If this election ends up at all close the jockeys(thousand strong armies of lawyers on both sides) are going to being whipping this horse all the way around the track. Its likely the losing side will blame these machines whether they are at fault or not forever because they are so fundamentally untrustworthy.

This issue isn't ever going to be over until all machines have a paper trail at a bare minimum. I'm inclined to say all of the purely electronic machines should be replaced with paper ballots run through a national standard optical scanner like most sane precincts are using. You can take the all electronic machines and put one in each precinct for the handicapped to use but otherwise get them out of the process because they are fundamentally untrustworthy.

Re:Unrealistic

[blamanj]

First of all, this "study" was done with full knowledge of the outcome of the election.

Irrelelvant, as it applies to all elections that are close.

Second, this doesn't show any problem specific to electronic voting.

True, the same mechanisms could be used, however, the likelihood is higher with computer voting because the processes are often hidden even to those running the balloting, and a single manufacturer may supply an entire state (or states).

Finally - see that horse? It's dead. You can stop beating it. Electronic voting has happened, is happening, and will happen.

Not the point. No one suggested that we turn back the clock. The point is to show how seemingly trivial effects can have consequences.

If you told someone that in an election of several million voters, having a set of voting machines off by only a single vote would affect the results, they probably wouldn't believe you. This analysis shows otherwise.

Re:Unrealistic

[Anonymous Coward]

Its very realistic but not limited to computer voting.

Electronic voting is not the issue here, its unverified voting.

Both India and Australia have used electronic voting with out issue. Mainly because the code and the process is open.
You can not privatise your electoral system and not expect something to go wrong.

Perhaps it should be paper ballots with electronic counting.

Do your thing with paper, get the machine to check it, i.e. if it can not read it it asks the voter to fix the error or get them to ask for help from the ballot people.

Then put the paper vote in the big box of votes.

Quick machine counts and if need be humans can check the real votes.

Re:Unrealistic

[eh2o]

No voter fraud cases are being in any way instructed by anyone up-top.

Uh... and who was Katherine Harris again? Its just not called "fraud" when its up-top -- its called "oops, sorry" and the current laws are too weak to prevent it from happening. As long as there is no accountability, there will be fraud -- at every level.

if they get caught, they'll get so utterly crushed it will be disgusting.

Crushed how, exactly? Voter rebellion? Not if the machines don't work, the laws are gutted and the courts packed with facists. Riots? Maybe in the ghetto but not in middle class america, plus its a great excuse to establish martial law and kill all the "terrorists". Massive non-violent protests? You might get some good turnout but Americans are dangerously complacent these days.

Re:Unrealistic

[gartogg]

If I can regiseter and vote illegally, I can cast 1 extra ballot.

If I can hack a voting machine, I can personally control the election results in my state.

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[account_deleted]

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Screw fraud, what about bugs?

[oldosadmin]

I'm more afraid of a glitch along the lines of "all diebold machines count an extra presidential vote whenever this combination of votes is chosen" ... or something like that. Some kind of UNINTENTIONAL glitch to fuck up the results.

Voter fraud is going to be the biggest issue of th

[ShatteredDream]

year...

It should sicken everyone that both major parties are willing to go so far to win that we are now hearing about so many voter fraud problems arising before the election. Voter fraud should be one of the most severe crimes on the federal law books, it should be classified as a form of "attempting to overthrow the United States Government." No less than five years in prison IMO.

That said, America needs a much more comprehensive solution to voter fraud. It is one of the few things that I think warrants having a DNA tag for every citizen. There should be a national voter database that has the DNA of all citizens in it so that instead of having a national id you only have to go to the precinct and get a quick biometric test done to verify your ID.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:Voter fraud is going to be the biggest issue of

[boisepunk]

I'm not trying to start a flamewar, but there's a reason they don't catalog all of our DNA or give us all numbers or something like that.
You do have a really good point about voter fraud in your first paragraph. Maybe you should push this point a little more. You just convinced me that voter fraud is a tantamount to overthrowing the US Government.

Re:On a side note

[fossa]

Absolutely. But see, there's this little problem: education takes time and effort. If I can't decide who to vote for based on sound bites from TV, then hell, I'll vote for Kerry because Bush looks like an ape. Yes, I am the problem with America today. I watch TV and never hear mention of any concepts covered in, say entry level economics or history courses. I hear tax cuts this, free trade that, but have no concept of the long or short term effects of these policies. I don't know what my senator has done; I don't know the name of my current House representative.

Ignorance is bliss, and bliss is god.

Re:Paper receipts and voter fraud question.

[MillionthMonkey]

Agreed, paper receipts taken home by voters are a bad idea. It leads directly to vote-buying. And there is no use-case I can imagine where this would be useful. "Could everyone please bring their receipts back to the school gymnasium for the recount!"

An auditable paper trail shouldn't involve paper that leaves the custody of the state.

Re:On a side note

[Capt'n Hector]

A little off-topic, but something that is quite relevant. Is anyone else a little apalled at the "Vote or Die" campaign put on by MTV to try to encourage kids to vote? The fact is, they are getting pushed to head to the polls, but often don't know anything about the issues at hand and will just vote randomly. What's the point then? Shouldn't political education be placed in front of political mobilization?

Oh, and adults know the issues? Kids nowadays are more informed than their parents, and there is nothing wrong with a GOTV campaign aimed at young voters.

Re:Wouldn't it depend

[Midajo]

If you shift votes from the loser to the winner, the outcome should still be the same.

If there is any shifting of votes, then we *all* lose.

What software?

[Hobadee]

I don't know if this has been brought up before or not, but either way I will bring it up.

How can electronic voting ever be trusted? (Surprisingly, my mom of all people, who knows nothing about computers brought up this point with me.) Even if we use open source voting software, we still have a major problem. How do we know the open source we saw is actually running on the machine? It would be more than easy to get the GUI to SAY that it was running "so-and-so version X.X". How do we actually KNOW it's running that though?

The only viable solution I see would be to actually have every voter load the software onto the machine, and the machine interface somehow, but then again, this has some major downfalls. How does the community feel about this? What solutions do you propose, in this election, and in future elections?

Re:UI designer interview questions

[realdpk]

1) There is no need for an "enter" key.
2) There shouldn't be a default selection, it wouldn't matter though, since there should not be an enter key.
3) No, they're not. You can still call it user error if they weren't paying attention, the blame rests on both sides. Now, since one side has a sinister reason, and the other side doesn't, I think it's not unreasonable to investigate and perhaps conclude it was intentional.

Re:On a side note

[swillden]

Kids nowadays are more informed than their parents

Well, the kids think so, anyway. Their parents might disagree... and might remember when they thought the same.

Re:On a side note

[JudgeFurious]

Saying that kids nowdays are more informed than their parents is almost exactly as idiotic as saying that they're going to vote randomly.

There IS nothing wrong with a campaign aimed at young voters though. It's hard to disagree with that.

Re:On a side note

[wass]

I disagree strongly. People SHOULD vote if they have the opportunity. Can you offer any sensible reason why a vote from an allegedly uninformed person is bad? Democracy shouldn't favor the informed over the uninformed.

Why is a brainwashed person who listens to news from the radical (right/left) more informed than someone that just watches Oprah/MTV and the local news, and otherwise wouldn't care to vote? Yet the radical right/left person will definitely vote for their cause, why is the vote of the Oprah/MTV fan less important?

Shouldn't political education be placed in front of political mobilization?

I actually think that political mobilization will encourage political education.

Many countries (eg Australia) actually fine people for not voting. The point of the campaign is to get people involved with the political system, which is the whole foundation of democracy to begin with.

By going out and voting, whether you do for a major candidate or even if you write-in 'mickey mouse', you get involved with the system. You begin to get some sense of not just the presidential candidates, but of state and city government, and many other proposals which you might not have otherwise known existed.

For example, if you own a pizza shop near the waterfront, and you go to the polls and learn there's a proposal for the city to borrow/spend $5 million to enhance the waterfront area, that resolution will definitely impact you greatly.

Then again

[cubicledrone]

Very little discussion has taken place on the wholesale repeal and replacement of several election laws in states like California, where people line up to vote at the entrance to grocery stores.

Under the old laws, which were repealed in grand fashion without so much as a whisper from the press, such voting would be flagrantly illegal. Voting less than 40 feet from a newsstand, for example, or voting on a day other than election day was unheard of...

...until now.

The election of the people whose responsibility it is to run our government is now treated with the same level of consideration as a sale on ground beef in the frozen food aisle. Naturally, this is fine, since everything in our society is evaluated based on the convenience factor for the SUV moms, and whether it can be scheduled between trips to the dry cleaners and the bank. More thought is invested in the right windows for the breakfast nook and the new countertops for the kitchen renovations at Home Repo than is invested in the sober consideration of who should run the country.

Selfishness, greed, apathy and laziness are great criteria for elections.

It was possible to vote before the most recent debate. It was possible to vote before several very lengthy and comprehensive articles on various propositions were published in newspapers. It was necessary for the legislature in California to repeal no fewer than EIGHT election laws in order to make "election month" legal, and nobody pays it a second thought. We did just fine with election DAY for 228 years, but now, that doesn't seem to be enough.

The potential for fraud and inaccuracy is immense, but there wasn't even the most rudimentary opportunity to even COMMENT on this before it showed up next to the paper towel display weeks before the election.

Election without representation is even worse than taxation without representation. We had better turn off the fucking high-definition entertainment center and develop some reverence for the democratic process, and soon.

Changing the way we vote.

[amper]

It seems fairly obvious that the fundamental flaws in our voting system (and indeed, our government and society) have been rather dramatically exposed by the last few election cycles in this country. Unfortunately, the main impediment to election reform in this country is the fact that the very institution that is designed to represent the interests of the people, the government, is comprised of the very people who stand to benefit the most from disallowing any election reform methods, and furthermore, cannot be considered as impartial auditors of the processes involved.

There are many things we need to do in this country to improve our democracy.

1. We need a drastic overhaul of election finance. Our current system is simply too opaque, and many political "contributions" (both monetary and rhetorical) are made by groups whose bias is indeterminate, or whose power to influence overwhelms large numbers of the electorate.

All overt contributions (especially those made by non-individuals) to political campaigns should be forced to reveal their true sources and not be allowed to hide behind names like "The Center for American Democracy", or such. (NB: There may in fact be a "Center for American Democracy", but I do not mean to single out any particular group) Unfortunately, this aspect of our system has traditionally been left to the press, an institution that is increasingly becoming corrupted by conflicts of interest.

This also has implications that reach far beyond electoral practices, but that's another argument for another day...

2. We need to move away from "winner takes all" elections. The two-party system that has evolved in this country has resulted in vast swaths of the electorate being disenfranchised and unrepresented. Choosing between the lesser of two evils or voting "against" one or another candidate or party does not tend to produce an effective form of goverment.

3. We need to ensure our vote-tallying methods are made as tamper-proof as possible by instituting a system by which all interested parties can have a transparently, independently verifiable, repeatable audit of the tally, and we need to do this without losing anonymity in the system.

4. To quote the estimable "speechwriters" for President Josiah Bartlet, "Education is the silver bullet." Only an informed electorate can make responsible electoral decisions.

I propose that we enact legislation to ensure that public education spending must equal defense spending in this country. I also believe that our education system should move to a year-round system and the age requirements for attendence be increased to 18 years of age, the age of voting majority.

I also believe that basic education standards and funding need to be controlled by the federal government, not at a state or municipal level, and that access to all levels of educations, including college-level education, and continuing education should be provided for with public monies. (Note that this would not disallow state or municipal enactment of even higher standards, nor would it disallow private education, provided that it meets federal minimum requirements). And those basic standards need to be raised to a higher bar.

The basic idea of NCLB was admirable, but the reality of that law is a disaster (and if we want no child left behind, then we need to ensure no teacher is left behind, as well as no parent).

As far as Number Three, above, is concerned--clearly, we need to enact an amendment to the Constitution that will provide that all election methods must be "open source". We simply must apply the "many eyes" doctrine to our elections. Only through transparent, independent, repeatably verifiable means can we ensure the validity of our elections. This clearly requires open source methods and rigorous accounting and auditing standards. As this is a fundamental aspect of our government, it must be codifi

Re:On a side note

[upsidedown_duck]

Bush is getting his 50% approval rating from somewhere, and I don't think it is college campuses.

I think support for Bush is largely a side-effect of mental illness, a very severe lack of cognitive processes, and/or such a burned-in zeal that the sky is pink and the earth is flat no matter what. There was this senile woman at the grocery store the other day, and she asked us if we were going to be "good Republicans" on Tuesday. Then there are the people who only care that Bush isn't a "baby killer". Then there are the people who think Bush is some sort of prophet. Then there are the people who vote for Bush, because the Democrats are commie pot-headed socialist utopic beatniks. Add up all those edge cases of humanity, and you could very well get most of that 50% (or 25%, considering how many people vote).

One very interesting trend I've noticed, is that intellectuals seem to be supporting Kerry, and that the people supporting Bush are either in favor of the war-mongering, are fundamentalist christians, or are people who believe that Republicans are more "capitalist" (highly debatable--see history of government balance sheets).

Before Tuesday, people really need to consider whether the words "Republican" or "Democrat" mean what they used to. It is very odd that the deficit shrunk under the Clinton administration, yet ballooned under Bush. It is very odd that Kerry mentions free trade for pharmaceuticals, yet Bush managed to evade that question in the debates. Only Kerry mentioned that the Patriot Act needs to be reviewed. Bush says that he wants to limit government intervention, but in the next sentence supports amending the Constitution. Bush is often anti-science, when science is the foundation for business growth. Note that Kerry's health care plan keeps the insurance industry in the loop--it is not a socialist pit like many people claim. I urge people to think about whether the historical definitions we are all used to matter anymore; I'm not convinced they do.