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BlackBox Voting Tests California Diebold Machines
Doc Ruby writes "The California Secretary of State has invited Black Box Voting to hack away at some Diebold voting systems. The testing is set for Nov. 30, 2005. Evaluations conducted by Black Box Voting in San Joaquin, Marin, and Alameda counties (Calif.) reveal that a critical paper audit component is missing for all absentee and mail-in ballots, and also for recounts. (Black Box personnel were hired by the Libertarian Party to conduct inspections.)"
The libertarian party of all parties? I'm not a member, though I did vote libertarian last year, but I like this. I wonder if any of /.'s democrats/republicans can venture to guess why their beloved party didn't sponsor something so crucial to to keeping the corruption out of our voting. Perhaps it's because they (say: democrats) live by the old cliche: "The enemy (republicans) of my enemy (libertarians/other 3rd party) is my friend" ?
These guys account for something like 1-5% of the vote (depending, of course), it makes sense that they're trying to get these things in line. Think I might just go pay my dues.
Recently, the state of Connecticut sent mailers to households inviting voters to demo electronic voting machines, and fill out a survey. I decided to attend the one held at a local branch of our state university. There were only three machines to try out. One was a Diebold machine.
On the two non-Diebold machines, I was allowed to vote a sample ballot as if the vote were real. The Diebold demonstrator, however, kept tight control over the Diebold machine, allowing only limited public interaction.
I did see something very interesting about the Diebold machine. Something I didn't like at all. The "proctor" explained that during a real voting session, the voter would get a smart card from election officials, insert it into the reader on the voting machine, vote, then turn back the card. The stated reason for the card was to prevent one person from voting multiple times while standing at the machine. However, the proctor was re-using the same card to restart the session as each new person stepped up. When I asked about this, the proctor claimed that during a real voting session, no-one would have access to a multi-use card. I asked her if that was a promise, but she didn't have an answer.
They're welcome to retain their intellectual "property," they just have to allow public inspection.
But isn't that part of the problem? Who would pick the "inspectors"? Diebold can't if it's supposed to be a fair study. The government, as a client of Diebold really shouldn't either. In addition, who would pay these inspectors for their time?
Also, the only ways I can see to protect their IP is to keep the number of inspectors small and to force them to sign NDAs. I guarantee this would raise a ruckus and questions about the real legitimacy of the study (I know it would on Slashdot in any case).
How would you protect the company's IP but allow an independent and honest study of the code to take place?
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
The big problem here is that paper ballots can still be tampered with - ballot box stuffing, throwing out opposing ballots, even changing ballots. It's possible.
Maybe if there was some sort of (excuse the buzz word here) biometric way of tracking a vote? Paper ballots with a thumbprint? Well... that does make the whole "secret ballot" thing problematic... and everyone's finger prints would then have to be on file to vote, which probably wouldn't fly either... most polling places don't even require a picture ID as far as I know.
Maybe we should drop the idea of a secret ballot? I'm not saying we should make it a matter of public record or anything, but allow votes to be tied to names specifically. Or is that already done?
Sorry, I'll admit I'm quite ignorant about voting procedures (don't mod me down for it - please correct my ignorance), but developing a truly functional and verifiable means of voting seems nearly impossible while votes records are secret.
I find it a rather disturbing statement that the slot machines are more effectively audited than the vote count in the land of the free.
My little site.
then doesn't it seem rather strange that the president who only has a 30% approval rating got elected by a majority only a year ago?
Yeah, I remember that. Actually, the Nevada Secretary of State's office asked the Gaming Control Board to review the Diebold paperless touchscreens in particular. The Board spent about four pages if I recall right, saying basically "it sucks" :).
Jim March
Black Box Voting
This will prolly get ignored or flamed like other posts I've made, but what the hell...
/. had its fun with the diebold crap, but I've never started any OSS projects let alone lead one =/
With all the potential of rigged elections and such, and everyone here concerned about democracy, and with Diebold (the company that was nailed to the cross a while back for all the corruption and scandels - how are they still around?!?!) making rediculous systems and claims... Why doesnt the open source community make our own - I ***KNOW*** that we could make a system that would out do everything out there 100 fold (duh), and I would think that there is enough backers of OSS that it could be pushed through politically. I was thinking about this the last time
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/11/08/politics /main1027281.shtml
Nobody bothers to ask how many other votes there were already in the system or what happened to them? Who was in charge of putting in
the votes? How many people's votes did he input? Who did he have them vote for? Why didn't he purge them after the test? How many other people did the same, and how many votes were left in the systems? Why isn't the media asking these questions? This would be a scandal in any other country in the world. USA election systems are PWNED by the Bush crime cartel.
http://nightweed.com/usavotefacts.html
The US elections are clearly fraudulent and thus should be considered invalid. Even by the lowest of banana-state standards. Why is no accountability taking place? Why don't Americans care if a criminal cartel is running their country? They're paying the bill sooner or later for the shit they are letting these people do to them.
I am disappointed that edjucated engineers are crying out for a paper trail on for voting machines. We can use an all computerized system that lets everybody count the votes, and is secured via asymmetric encryption. Two public lists are maintained by the government. One list contains registered public keys. This list is generated during voter registration, when a person submits their typical voter registration info along with their public key and an optional request to be anonymous. If a person is anonymous, then only their public key is added to the list, and otherwise their name is also added. When people vote, they use their own computer to cast a vote via the web, and their vote consists of a pair:
( public key, encrypt( private key, ( public key, votes ) ) )
Then anybody can have access to both lists. Anything that can be observed using a paper trail is now observable via a purely computerized system. Even better, since anybody has access to both lists, anybody can count the votes and anybody can audit the system.
You know the shortest way to sort out this whole Diebold mess is to actually temper with the machines in certain states.
:)
And make the Libertarians win the next election in those states, followed closely by the Green Party.
Wanna see how fast the system will be fixed then by both Republicans and Democrats?