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Diebold Threatens Wary Voting Clerk
An anonymous reader writes "From the Salt Lake Tribune: a wary county clerk called in BlackBoxVoting.org to test the integrity of Diebold voting fraud machines, part of a recent $27 million statewide purchase (to make sure that only the "Right" candidates win). Diebold goon says machines are now jinxed and it may cost up to $40,000 to fly in a company witch-doctor to make sure there were no warranty violations. Since EVERY SINGLE VOTER who uses these machines is a potential hacker looking to alter election results, why is Diebold so concerned? "
Is it me - or did that post make no sense...
With such an effective president-deciding method as the 'Good Old Boys' network, who needs Diebold anyway?
If someone looking at the machines causes them to be compromised then how on earth can you put them in voting booths when hundreds of people will have physical access to them in a private setting? If you depend on completely restricting access to the machines then you've already lost, haven't you? I applaud the clerk for taking this stand. The very idea that the machines can't be inspected by a third party shows just how fragile such systems are. If they were truely secure it wouldn't matter who looked at them or how.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Did perhaps the submitter want to slant the blurb just a little bit more?
Since EVERY SINGLE VOTER who uses these machines is a potential hacker looking to alter election results, why is Diebold so concerned?
Because EVERY SINGLE VOTER isn't allowed a level of access to the machines to presumably perform an audit or otherwise tamper with and/or view the inner workings of the machines.
The solution is quite simple:
- Have a permanent, voter verifiable, auditable, and recountable paper trail (a feature Diebold and ES&S both offer)
- Have an open source system (which actually isn't at all required if the above condition is met)
And I don't mean just gerrymandering.
I feel kinda sick...is Diebold gonna get away with this?
Is this a case for the ACLU?
Blar.
Witch doctors? Jinxes? I read the entire linked article and didn't see any of that. What I did see was that Diebold wants to make sure the machines still work after a 3rd party possibly tinkered with them. I'd certainly be concerned if I sent a machine out into the wild, a 3rd party took a look at it, and now it may not be functioning properly. Diebold may be a little over the top here, but their concern is certainly warranted.
There were a couple layers of stupidity here. First, testing provisions should have been written into the contract. Second, the clerk should not have just gone off and done their own thing without investigating the ramifications. Diebod ols correct - they don't know what was done to the systems by this random clerk who decided to test. They could have added hardware, modified software... Who knows? Of course Diebold won't guarantee a machine after someone has messed with it. Having said that, test plans and methodoligies should have been agreed upon prior to the purchase. Maybe they were and the clerk didn't know about it, maybe they weren't... In either case, the state and/or clerk screwed up. Diebold's response is exactly as it should be. They aren't threatening anyone, they are stating that they can no longer certify the mchine because physical access (essential to security) has been potentialy compromised and it will require an audit to make sure everything is as it should be.
I keep seeing articles about Diebold and suspicious activities, and local goverments are still buying their equipment, it will be really interesting to see the results of the black box tests.
GeekServ Unix Consulting Services (http://www.geekserv.com)
Why does Diebold design these machines in such a way that they *CAN* be hacked? I think that involving an Operating System and software in the design of such a machine is a critical error. As a computer engineer, I realize that overcomplicating things can lead to errors. DSP's can make hardware extremely cheap, but there are places where analog circuits are cheaper and more realiable! Why hasn't Diebold designed a hardwired electronic circuit or a mechanical system with failsafes such that the machine can't be hacked, and the wrong candidate will not be selected if the machine fails? There are so many places where their current design can and will go wrong. I believe that it's time for these loonies (or preferrably someone else who has more sense) to come up with a more rudimentary and failsafe design!
"Since EVERY SINGLE VOTER who uses these machines is a potential hacker looking to alter election results, why is Diebold so concerned?"
Did you sleep through ALL of yor cynicism classes? Diebold is throwing a fit to discourage anyone from snooping around in the guts of their voting machines.
Someone might, y'know, find something. . . . . . . .
Because if every single voter gets to hack the election results, then it's be a fair election. Duh!
January 20, 2009: President Stallman took the oath of office today, after the GNU/ESR ticket (GNU's Not United-states!) narrowly beat the Gates/Ballmer team campaign in an election that stunned the ruling Demopublican coalition...
nope. it can't possibly be that a right-leaning candidate could evar get more votes than a left-leaning candidate. therefore, it must be faulty voting machines!!!2!!
Diebold voting fraud machines... Diebold goon says machines are now jinxed... a company witch-doctor... Thank god for reasonably unbiased news postings.
40 grand for flying in techs sounds like a load of BS to scare potential whistle blowers and doubters. It is interesting to see how big corps get away with such blatant strong-arming even after all the controversy over voting accuracy.
According to Diebold, the polling machines are suspect, and it'll cost $40,000 to verify everything.
On the one hand - what if Diebold is purely running a bluff? Then the election board is going to have to pay $40,000 for Diebold to send in someone who will attach some alligator clips somewhere, run something that flashes lights, and generally run some dog and pony show before deciding whether its in their interest to declare the polling machines as sabotaged, just damaged, or just fine.
On the other hand - what if Diebold is honest? Then the election board is going to have to pay $40,000 for Deibold to send in someone who will attach some alligator clips somewhere run something that flashes lights, and generally run some dog and pony show before deciding whether the machines are in fact sabotaged, just damaged, or just fine.
Whether Diebold is bona fide or not, they are likely to claim trade secret privilege to hide the actual workings of their machine or their testing mechanisms... and again, if they're telling the truth, then they would claim that, and if they're not, then their claim would be hard to challenge.
So the fundamental question is this: do you trust Diebold?
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
I guess I forgot to run them through Babelfish a few times?
I have worked in the regulated fields of avionics and medical devices. You would think that federal and state governments would have regulations governing exhaustive testing of electronic voting machines against requirements to avoid conflicts like this. What is a secretary of state's job but to prevent pissing matches like this? I don't blame Diebold for not wanting some 3rd party yahoo breaking seals on their machines. But they can't point to a documented, legitimate qualification process to allay their customer's valid concerns. This is lousy engineering of the kind that pervades traditional IT.
an ill wind that blows no good
Man Diebold looks slimier and slimier every passing week, but I'm more disturbed by Joe Demma's, Salt Lake's chief elections officer, response to Bruce Funk's actions. Granted, Funk acted by going around Demma by calling in Black Box Voting to check the Diebold machines, when presumably Demma is supposed to be responsible for that (just my guess as he's the chief elections officer).
However, Demma seems more incensed at Funk because he may cost the state $40,000 for Diebold's astronomical recertification fee. He doesn't seem to be worried that people might not trust these machines. He doesn't seem to care that a state officer was worried enough to call in a non-profit third party to verify the integrity of these machines. I mean, these things could possibly affect the outcome of a vote, the foundation for a democratic republic! But instead of worrying about these machines he's clearly more upset about the $40,000 and Funk not talking to him about his concerns regarding the voting machines.
And of COURSE Diebold is going to tell you the machines are fine and fair. Sheesh, they want to make money don't they?
Isn't it great that chief elections officers have their priorities straight?
Give me a ballot sheet and a pencil any day over these closed, proprietary black box machines.
I know Slashdot has leanings certain ways on certain issues, and I'm fine with that, but we've just officially completed the smooth transition into a 15-year-old's blog.
Christ, this is sad to see.
I heard it at a Republican caucus. What was amazing was that almost everyone there was equally appalled as me. Here I thought that only the super-left, like myself, would be interested in vote integrety, but here were 50+ middle aged men and women all just as angry that we were installing systems that other states are thinking of getting rid of.
I'm personally looking forward to election day where all the machines at my district mysteriously malfunction when I try to "vote" (wink wink, nudge nudge). I'm also thinking of getting stickers made to place on the machines. Something on the order of "WARNING! Election may be rigged by computer. Ask for a paper receipt to verify your vote."
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Based on the article, it sounds like the third party was poking around under the hood. If so, Diebold has a point in saying the machines may have been compromised. They have no idea what this third party may have done (intentionally or unintentionally). The machines should have been inspected by a *mutually* trusted third party. Anyone else "breaking the seal" is a compromise to the system.
mods the parent as "Troll", consider this, both Bush and Gore were both members of the "Skulls" when they were at Yale. The point, both of the nominees for President where of the same socio-economic class. I don't want to delve into any class war crap, I'm just saying that I've never seen, let's say, a college professor or someone who's not a millionaire or from a family that devotes it's legacy to political life - like the Kennedys or the Bushes - getting nomiated by the major politcal parties. And even if they did, they're treated as crackpots. Every election year, our new media profiles some guy who's running for president on some wacky platform or they're running to make a statement, like "Make pot legal!"
Saturday is April 1. Slashdot will be shut down. Sorry for the inconvenience.
First what they do is print confusing ballads in florida to turn people against paper ballets and create an outrage at typical means of voting, then offer a very simple touch screen way of voting without a paper trail. Congratulations, even the symbolic act of picking between the two puppets is on its way out.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
...and all the mouth-breathing joe-jobbers will jump on board. Scared that someone might bomb their dirt farm.
See? I can do that too. Ass.
Blar.
Congratulations are in order Taco. I don't think I've ever read a more inflammatory summary here. It's so over the top that it's almost unintelligible.
"Then the election board is going to have to pay $40,000 for Deibold to send in someone who will attach some alligator clips somewhere run something that flashes lights, and generally run some dog and pony show before deciding whether the machines are in fact sabotaged, just damaged, or just fine."
Here's where this particular lie is exposed:
1) How can a single voting machine even cost $40K? I want to see the parts breakdown on *that*.
2) Wouldn't you want all the machines recertified before each election? I mean, if they're sitting in warehouse someplace between elections, who knows who poked at them? So each machine costs $40K to use every election?
3) And if this is all T&M, lets assume a generous hourly rate of $250/hour and the guy is staying in a $500 a night hotel. That means this takes about 3 full weeks to certify a machine!
Does anybody understand the implications of Diebold claiming $40K worth of damages here?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
What everyone is missing is that this clerk allowed unauthorized access to the machine, regardless of the intent. He went beyond the scope of his responsibility and did not follow the chain of command.
As they say, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions".
Flame away or mod down, but the fact remains that he compromised the back-end system (something Joe Voter would not have access to). Now Diebold needs to validate that it's still okay (something that they or the county are probably contractually obligated to do when an incident like this occurs.)
The county clerk should just get out. He's already finished. The state has already gotten into bed with Diebold, and the clerk has already tainted himself in the eyes of the state by calling in the activists.
Even if he right about the machines (and I believe he is)... the Powers That Be have already made their mind up about the issue.
The only ones now that can change things are the voters themselves, and that's a very tall order. We can barely get a 50% turnout to vote for president... how the hell can we get enough people out to call for a change to voting devices? And then, overcome the government's (and Diebold's) spin?
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
"On the other hand - what if Diebold is honest? "
On the third hand, it is a clear confession from Diebold that third parties can't accurately verify their voting machines and that their voting machines can be rigged.
So any county that thinks it is verifying that the machine isn't rigged by runnig pre-ballot checks is wrong.
They can point to this statement and say "IT ISN'T ENOUGH THAT WE VERIFY IT, BECAUSE DIEBOLD ADMITS THEY CAN BE RIGGED IN WAYS ONLY IT CAN DETECT".
Yes, a third party should examine the machines.
However, it should be a disinterested third party, not an advocacy group. No matter how well meaning and ethical the people in the group are, they can nonetheless be painted as enemies of the vendor.
What should be done is to have a professional firm that specializes in computer security audit the machines and provide a report on whether the machines are secure; if not whether and how they can be suecured. And provided the machines can be secured, what policies and procedures are needed to operate them so that fraud can be discouraged and detected.
This is just like having an independent financial auditor come in and look at your books and your financial control procedures.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Why is everyone so hung up on: "Why aren't these machines inpenetrable to all sorts of physical attacks?"
Who cares how physically secure the machines are or aren't? Even if the machines were tamper proof (which they should be), who cares? The real problem here is that we have a closed vote counting and verification process. That is unacceptable.
Elections and the vote counting process should be completely and utterly transparent. I trust no machine to count votes. If we use any kind of machine, it should be verified by random human recounts.
This is not the kind of problem for a clever or slick solution. The only sane solution, IMHO, is to apply the KISS principle. Keep it Simple Stupid.
This would appear to be a very one-sided article. There is no detail or statement from blackboxvoting about what was actually done. Only a statement from Diebold about what they think was done. It does seem that the Diebold machine is weak if there is no way to restore to default level without a specialist flying in for $40K. Diebold should learn a few things about customer relations. It is really bad PR if a county official quits rather than certify an election using your machine.
But at this point, does anyone trust Diebold to conduct the people's business unilaterally? It's pretty obvious that we need some way to involve third parties in verifying voting systems and results -- without Diebold standing on the throats of the voting clerks involved, without extreme expense, and in general without this sort of "keep the door closed, the experts are making sure it's okay" tone.
Another example of Diebold not being well-suited for this business. They really, really, really don't understand the nature of the market they're in, as the leaked e-mails way back started to show us. Talk about your PR problems. They earned this bias and suspicion, from the moment those "Win Ohio for Bush" quotes came around.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Joe Demma, chief of staff for Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert, the state's chief elections officer, was plainly incensed with Funk for allowing Black Box to probe the machines.
"The problem is that instead of asking us or Diebold, Bruce Funk allowed a third party to put the warranty in jeopardy,"
So let me get this straight.
Election commissioner notices an irregularity in the memory of some voting machines, from whom the owner of the manufacturing company has very clear partisan leanings.
Election commissioner calls in a third party to run testing on the machines.
Now, I do not see a problem with third parties running audits on the machines used to count my votes. In fact, I want as MANY third parties running tests on thes to insure thier accuracy, as the fate of myself, my family, mmy state, and my country will be affected by what this machine spits out.
However, here we have third party verification being spun by Diebold as being a VERY BAD THING.
Whatever happened to transparency in government and in democratic processes? Is it not one of the core values of America?
You say you want a revolution....
In other news, Diebold President Dewey Cheatum stated that $40,000 to "reload the voting pattern" was perfectly reasonable. "It's why it's called 'buying elections'," he said to a group of startled reporters, "if it was free, anybody could do it." When asked whether Diebold would consider printing receipts for each vote so that there would be some sort of paper trail Mr. Cheatum replied, "Heck, why we don't just go one step further: skip the whole going out to the polls, and we'll just mail people a notice telling them who they voted for." At this point in the interview, Mr Cheatum began responding to all questions with vigorous wedgies and obscene gestures.
Clint Curtis, the Diebold programmer who says politicians paid him to rig voting machines in Florida, is running for Congress. If what he says he can do is true, who would have the guts to run against him? Alternately, since he was fired and the voting machine company has a grudge, how can he possibly win?
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make install -not war
"The problem is that instead of asking us or Diebold, Bruce Funk allowed a third party to put the warranty in jeopardy," Demma said in a telephone interview from Emery County. "If I sound frustrated, it's because I am frustrated. We don't know what they did to the machines. If Bruce would have just asked, we could have saved this forty grand."
First the BS part. If every machine is identical and every machine went through the same testing procedure then there shouldn't be ANY discrepancies in the machines memory. This is presuming that before the elections only that data necessary to perform the tabulation are on the systems. This is total BS to say that the discrepancies are the results of fonts.
As far as the $40,000 to 'fix' whatever is wrong with them, how does anyone know what needs to be fixed if Diebold doesn't allow anyone to test the machines? How does anyone know that Diebold won't surrepticiously make changes which could alter the outcome of an election by performing this fix?
Now for the truth part. By allowing a third party to examine the machines without notifying anyone, Funk did go a bit overboard. This is not to say that he went beyond his mandate to protect the integrity of the voting process. He should be commended for making sure all the i's are dotted and t's crossed before allowing votes to be cast.
However, by not informing the commissioners of his desire to have a third-party examine the machines for flaws or outright corruption, he has invalidated any findings by Black Box since it is true no one knows what they did or did not do.
The correct process would have been to tell the commissioners of his desire for a third-party review and if they objected or if Diebold objected, he could have explained his reasonings why he wanted another set of eyes to check things out (which is pretty much what was said in the article). If they refused the request he would have a much more firm standing to say whether or not the machines will do what the manufacturer claims they will do since by not allowing the examination it would appear that they, either the commissioners or Dieblod (or both), have something to hide.
As it stands now he's shot himself in the foot because he went behind everyones back and secretly had someone else examine the machines.
What is truly interesting is that the commissioners don't appear to be interested in what Black Box found but are more concerned that they'll have to shell out $40,000. That doesn't sound like the people are too interested in ensuring that the machines will work correctly but are more concerned about bean counting.
If Funk does resign I hope he vehemently and vociferously expresses his doubts as to the capabilities of these machines and insist that people use absentee ballots to vote. He should make the rounds on tv so he can clearly explain why he has his doubts so the people can understand what is going on.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I can't link the initial article, but the filter you've put on it doesn't change anything -- Diebold has flooded the voting machine marketplace with cheap, crappy technology that is demonstrably insecure, and they've done it on the taxpayer's dime. There isn't any good reason why a representative of the taxpayers should not be able to poke and prod at these machines, and claims that they cannot be verified as secure anymore are codswallop. If they can't stand being handled by unauthorized personnel, then what are we to expect after leaving them standing in a public place all day while hundreds of grubby plebes put their filthy hands all over them?
My tone is hostile because this conversation gets hostile pretty quickly -- in a democracy, there is only one thing that should absolutely be the property and purview of all the people all the time, and that's the integrity of our vote. Without it, we don't have jack shit.
There was a very popular book (I believe now out of print - published in 1994 - "Applied Cryptography".) In it - it had a very good example of "secure voting". (I believe this concept has been published/discussed outside of this text - sorry to those who might have came up with it.) To try to summarize (removing cryptographic references where possible) - everyone gets a "ticket" saying they voted - and everyone gets a (separate, non-trackable) "ticket" saying *what* they voted for. Lists of both "tickets" are made public. Anyone and everyone can verify that their vote was cast and recorded properly. The point here - is that the the security in the system isn't in the machine, but rather in the system. Wouldn't that make more sense??
why we can't just put an "X" on a piece of paper, fold it, put it in a box, get our finger stained with purple ink, open the box at the end of the night in the presence of multiple witnesses, and count the "X"s for each candidate/question?
there are many things computers are good for, but voting doesn't seem to really demand computational power, internet access, etc.
The picture you paint would not be the same if: 3rd party gets called in to inspect machines. 3rd party opens machines. 3rd party modifies machines to skew votes. Diebold gets blamed for inaccuracy or votes are skewed. Who verified what the 3rd party was doing? Did anyone document the tests? Did anyone supervise the tests? A 3rd party can have a hidden agenda and use such a situation to their advantage. Diebold is correct here. They cannot guarantee their machine after someone has opened it up and could have modified things.
Both Clinton (D) and Nixon (R) were born poor, and made their political careers on their wits. Neither made any significant money outside their political careers, except books published after they left office. Even though they became rich by politics, they came from a disadvantaged underclass, exploiting America's class mobility to get power.
There's lots of class war in America, where capitalism is rigged to preserve its best opportunities for rich families. But the president themself is more of a pawn in that war than an emblem of it.
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make install -not war
Makes you wonder who is running the show over there and what the agenda is.
This is about the 10th story I have heard about Diebold doing something shady if not corrupt.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Are you even suppose to be submitting stories? Where's Zonk? Is Zonk on the phone? Get him in here....
I just picture Taco in a bathrobe and slippers shuffling into "Slashdot Central" when Zonk and the others are out of the room and sitting down and submitting articles until they come back in, slap his hand and lead him back to his room to up his medications.
Put down the submit key! PUT IT DOWN!
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
So now because slashdot has let so many BBV stories and astroturfing go on here, these guys look more and more legitmate. They even won some EFF award.
If you criticize some of the nefarious things they have done or even point out which voting activist friendly sources have disowned BBV, the BBV astroturfers accuse you of shooting the messenger.
BBV encourages its member to astroturf like this, bomb news media fax machines, call into shows, etc. You are witnessing how they net new members and funds.
Never overestimate the end user. -jeramy b. smith
Over at blackboxvoting.org they have some more information about what tests were actually run on the machines, what they found, and what diebold's official response was. Apparently, BBV did not actually do the tests themselves, they arranged for 3rd party security experts to go in and do the analysis.
h .cgi?file=/1954/19743.html
Here's the link:
http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-aut
It's on black box voting's website, so obviously it will be biased, but at least it gives more detail than the gloss-over provided by the tribune.
Lets see if I can create a post similar to the OPs in terms of grammatic logic and eloquence.... "OMG, DIEBOLD IS TEH HAXORZ, DIEBOLD NO MAKE GOOD ELECTION MACHINE! WITCH-DOCTOR? I HAVE TO TEH TELL MY l33t SPEAK HOMIEZ ON SLASHDOT...." Ok, maybe mine was more coherent, but I came close!
Post apocalyptic gaming goodness
I keep hearing about tagging articles, but I've never actually seen how to do it. It seems like a useful feature, so... anyone know how?
But Diebold told the commissioners that allowing unauthorized people access to the machines had violated their integrity.
I guess the obvious comment here is "What integrity?". The entire problem with the Diebold machines is that they're black boxes, and the results they report aren't subject to an independent audit. What electronic voting machines require to be trustable, and what Diebold doesn't provide, is a physical voter-verifiable token showing their votes, which can be manually recounted as necessary.
Have you read my blog lately?
way to stick it to the man with all that insightful commentary, dude!
hey taco, this is one of those times where ditching the submitted commentary is a good idea.
That questioning the received wisdom of the sheeple is now perceived as "bias." It's really fucking sad.
Very insightful post!
I, for one, welcome our new squirrel overlords...
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
So in vegas there are these things called "slot machines". You put quarters in and get big money back. They are regulated. Its very hard to tamper with them. You'd think that voting by machine, which some might say is slightly more important, might be at least as equally highly regulated. This of course doesn't mean that its a good idea or that there still wouldn't be problems, just to say there are systems where machines (mostly those that track money) do a pretty good job.
only infrmatn esentil to understandn mst b tranmitd
$40K to re-image a drive and maybe poke around to make sure no key logging hardware is in place (although a lot of good that will do with a touch screen)? Sounds like easy money to me.
Wanted: witty unique signature. Must be willing to relocate.
Comparing this to other countries is pointless - nobody has as fine-grained voting, absurd expectations from the news-watching population and "zero participation". No purely paper system can keep up any longer, not because of "hanging chads" but because the news media will release "results" (real or made up) as soon as they can. Any delay for counting - by non-existent "volunteers" - is reported as potential fraud by the news media.
Sure, some kind of countable paper might be nice, but it leads to silly things. If you sit five people down to count marks on 100,000 pieces of paper you will not get one result. At best, you will get two or three. And, it is not repeatable. We have had close elections recently that have gone through several recounts only to still be decided by one party giving up. I believe it was most recently the Govenor of Washington that was decided this way because the results were less than 1,000 votes different and each count produced different results, with a different winner.
I know paper isn't the answer.
As to the reasonablness of the $40K fee, it is real simple. Diebold is being asked to recertify the machines and they can charge anything they want. Government contracts like this always result in signficant charges like this because there is no option. It is stupid and naive to assume the fee would be anything like time-and-materials for a couple of real workers. There is also virtually unlimited liability if it is done wrong or not done at all. Compare this to recertifying a heart-lung machine for a hospital and consider that it would only be one person dead if it was wrong.
As has been discussed so many times on /. most of the problems with the Diebold stems from the unneccessary complexity of the system
Other systems in use like the Indian Electronic Voting Machines or EVMs, offer all of the functional features with a much higher level of security and accessibility and for a price that is very easy on the taxpayers. For a very interesting comparison look at http://techaos.blogspot.com/2004/05/indian-evm-com pared-with-diebold.html
Can I borrow your sig?
I've lived in several states, numerous counties within the US and never seen a simple "A or B" ballot. Not even close.
It gives us the illusion of democratic government and the possibility of change.
Man, you really need that seminar!
As it stands now he's shot himself in the foot because he went behind everyones back and secretly had someone else examine the machines.
Behind everyone's back? He the county clerk--it's his job to certify elections!
And if he be reading this, I urge him DO NOT RESIGN! Resigning solves nothing, and would be interpreted by democracy's enemies (read: Diebold, et al) as an admittance of guilt...
When was the last time your bank "forgot" that you took money from an ATM? Do you ever hear of problems like that? No? Why does it happen with a vote?
I've become far more cynical about the process as every recount that's happened has had discrepancies. New, uncertified code is loaded on the machines the day before the election. The code is not available for examination by third parties (yet, a slot machine is.)
Why were exit polls so much more accurate in the days of paper ballots? I find it unlikely that the methodology has gotten that much worse, especially considering that similar districts in the same election have varying margins of error that correlate to the voting system in use at the polling location.
-30-
Besides, there should some verification test that can be run independently on the machine to verify it is working as intended, which would not require $40k and a plane trip to use. Clearly, as stated in the article, Diebold is wanting to make this person an example so no other election official will let anyone else take a look at the machine.
In answer to the poster's question Diebold is behaving this way because the machines are not secure nor can they be. Anyone who gets a close look at them can see that. Diebold, like ES&S, and Sequoia is opting to muscle in and abuse people rather than admit that no machine is perfect and try to make them as good as possible.
The companies have done similar things in other states. In Florida All 3 have refused to sell any systems to Volusia County. The county's Election Director Ion Sancho was the one who allowed his systems to be tested for security and discovered the "Hrusti Hack" namely whereby the machines will load arbitrary code stored on their memory cards and execute them. Such a hack makes it trivial to change ballots, erase totals, etc. It has since been shown that systems by Sequoia Inc. are vulnerable to the same hack.
Volusia county is also the county that caused Al Gore to initially declare defeat in 2000. During election night Al Gore was leading Bush with a comfortable margin. At 10om someone uploaded a card that reported -16,022 votes for Al Gore and 10,000 for some socialist canidate all from a precinct with 600 voters.
This card passed all of Diebold's stringent "safety checks" (whatever the hell they were) and changed the statewide totals putting Gore well behind Bush. Gore declared defeat. After that the county discovered the errors and reset the system claiming that the new totals were correct. Nevertheles the fact remains that the card got in, was loaded, and threw off a U.S. Presidential election.
Now the companys won't sell to Volusia and are telling the state and the feds that it's Sancho's fault because he wants to test the systems for security. Florida's Governor Jeb Bush (brother of shrub) has also personally blamed Sancho for putting the state behind.
Meanwhile the Department of Justice is threatening to sue the state or withold funds because the county has not bought new systems even though noone will sell said systems to them. The idea being, apparently, that he should just sell out the elections.
At the end of the day the collusion and bullying going o by the companies, by the U.S. Government over HAVA (written by Bob Ney former congressmen for Diebold and now a leading figure in the Abramoff corruption investigation) and by frightened state governments is insane. At the end of the day the only losers will be the American People, of all stripes.
Other than the slight bias in the posting.....at least one of the tagging keywords is biased ;)
:) Nothing better change between ANY of those ;)
How many machines is this? They mention $40k, is that to check 4 machines or 40,000 machines. Makes a slight difference in whether the charge is reasonable. Can certainly see diebold point here, i wouldn't certify the machines when you let someone tinker with em.
It said he was suspicious of the memory, so he can see if anything changes between the original, after blackbox, and after double checking by diebold i hope
Our $900 point of sale terminal prints a receipt, don't get why this is sooo hard to get voting terminals to do it when they cost $27,000,000 / x. Then a test run would be simple and not require any tinkering it seems.
What do you do when you don't trust either side?
According to my checking account balance, I think that the Diebold ATM machine that I use must be jinxed too.
Amen.
Your comment makes me want to buy a subscription, karma-whore a couple of articles, just to give you karma for that post. Thank you.
-James
It's like the "Moving to Canada" cliche. By leaving, you're removing one more person who thinks the way you do and can help make a difference.
Dude should stick around and have the machines tested again after the election. Then when he gets fired, it brings this whole thing into the spotlight again.
I agree on one point, though: voter apathy is the cause of this, and you can't make somebody care. Until people care enough to show up (get up early, take the day off, or vote early) and make their voices heard, this will not change.
Dare to Hope. Prepare to be Disappointed.
I've seen it mentioned a few times, both with this article and previous ones mentioned on Slashdot, that having an open source voting system would be the best, as people all over the world would be able to point out discrepencies and holes in the system.
However, no one has actually gone far enough to list out how it could be done. Since I am but a lowly programmer (forced to do so in Coldfusion, of all things), I ask Slashdot to humbly analyze and tear apart the following idea, as it related to open source:
First and foremost, no Windows. While I am not in the "anti-M$" crowd, and use Windows XP for my home operating system, it is bloated beyond comprehension for what we have need of. Even using one of the smaller forms like Windows CE would not do well, because we'd still have to worry about liscensing and fees, creating more of a headache for the government.
An Open Source Voting system should start with Unix or Linux, but not be built on top of those O.S.- instead, the systems should be modified to be an voting system and nothing more. No internet, no editing software (except what would be required for voting), etc. The operating system would exclusively allow for administrative setup, voting, and send the tallies to a main server meant to collect and conclude.
Next, the voting system (which I would like to coin as "VetOS") will print out every single ballet. After a user votes, the system prints the vote out on paper. The voter is asked to ensure all votes are as desired, and nothing is submitted until the user confirms that the paper version is a-ok. These paper ballots are turned into those in charge of that election center, as is normally done with regular paper ballots, who in turn put them into a locked box. By having a user verify the print out, hand out the print out to someone else, who then stores it in a secure location, you then have a verifiable trail. Extra precautions could include a personalized rubber stamp that is used by those working at the election center that is used on each print out before it goes into the machine.
While it would be quicker to have the print outs go into a locked box connected to the machine, there's always the chance that someone could sneak in and switch out the box, or that the print outs could become messed up (and no one would know until you had to actually open the box to count the votes.) Considering how important this is, the extra time (which really isn't much over what we have now) is worthwhile.
Finally, make the system as such that it can be run on just about everything. Smaller counties and towns don't have the budget to get fancy-pants touch screens and laser printers. Electronic voting is something that would benefit all, and every attempt should be made so that all can use it. Make the program able to scaled up; if all you have access to is equipment from 1998, it should work on that, but if you have state-of-the-art touchscreens, it should work there, as well.
This is a project that I believe the Open Source community could undertake (assuming it hasn't, already). Succeeding in such a course would not only decrease voting discrepancies, but would give the open source community a boost in the public eye.
Diebold has earned itself enough of a reputation that it seems insane that anybody would approve the Diebold buy in the first place.
! G ! O !!! ! F ! U ! N ! K !!!
If it can't be independently verified then it is uncertifable.
The claim in previous elections is that it CAN be verified by running a trial ballot on the machines before the election. This is clearly false, since Diebold now asserts that this test will not detect this 'tinkering' you speak of.
Which means that any Diebold 'tinkering' cannot be detected either. Which means the machines can't be certified as accurate.
You know, everyday about 100,000 people place their lives in the trust of software 'black boxes' on planes and not a peep from the newly political geeks.
You gonna have to trust somebody, sometime.
The bigger issue is how the votes are going to be tallyed? Hook them all up to the 'net so we get faster returns. Oh goodie...
-ps
The whole point of electronics is to MAKE IT EASIER TO MANIPULATE INFORMATION.
This is wonderful for telecommunications, computing, etc., but it's not a plus for election integrity.
Hugo Chavez already rigged one election right under Jimmy Carter's nose using electronic voting; MIT mathematicians using Benford's Law found a 99% probability the vote tallies were fraudulent.
"If the printer inside jams, it stops accepting transactions."
Well, I've never seen one jam; but I've seen them run out of paper plenty of times and keep right on running transactions.
Adherence to the truth is a form of disloyalty.
I'd certainly be concerned if I sent a machine out into the wild, a 3rd party took a look at it, and now it may not be functioning properly.
If I were that election commissioner, my concern would be that all the Diebold "engineer" they send is going to install is the latest back door to the machine.
However if I were one of the Bush people my concern would be to send over someone to talk to that election commissioner, maybe bring his youngest daugther home from kindergarden or someting.
If Diebold sends them an invoice for $40k, they had better not pay it. It'd be like someone watering my lawn while I'm at work, without being asked, and billing me a week's wages for it.
... on all the Ohio and Florida machines? Nah. This was a Utah county. But it does beg the question if the printer fonts on Diebold Machines are all the same (yeah, has gotta be the same), or if they differ by district, counties or states. Its easy for the Kathleen Harris-esque Voting Commissioner to check - copy all the printer fonts to their secure keycards and submit to BBvoting (or Consumer Reports Labs). Maybe even Apple Computer would offer to look at them, now that they are Intel and can run Windows.
Nah. I'm just being paranoid. Forget what I just said.
Any relation to Orrin Hatch? Utah is pretty inbred and so I am wondering if there is anything else going on.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/
Government has to be transparent. If it isn't? Draw your own conclusions.
It's a little embarrasing that the "Bringer of Democracy" can't even be trusted to roll out a fair voting system.
Just a short civics refresher: A voting clerk is usually a retired little old lady volunteering to watch a polling station. A county clerk is a prominent elected official. Depending on the laws of the state, the county clerk likely has more than sufficient legal powers to call the election procedures into question. The summary makes the person sound like a poor downtrodden powerless gnome being bullied by an evil corporation. Maybe the story should tilt just a little bit in the other direction. But, still, more power to anyone who fights this questionable product.
how can he possibly win?
That just depends on how good of a coder he is and how well he hid his backdoors now doesn't it?
Unless he spent all his time just rigging it once, not to be able to do it when he wanted. Maybe he put some cool eastereggs in and in 2008 Fidel Castro will win in Florida!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Why were exit polls so much more accurate in the days of paper ballots?
e %20comparisons%202004.htm
I've seen no proof or evidence of this.
If there was some evidence of this...
My explanation: exit polls weren't used as political weapons in the "old days". They now are.
Another explanation: selective polling and oversampling of women (this is definitely done) in the exit polls. I watched the exit poller at my place of voting select about 80% women to 20% men, even though a roughly equal number of women were voting.
Another explanation: majority of polling done during normal working hours, many traditional conservative voters (men with 8-5 business jobs) don't vote until after work
There also seems to be a trend that conservatives are less likely to want to answer political surveys than liberals.
There were polls that up until election time were showing Bush with a small lead. But everyone went with Zogby's poll (since it showed Kerry leading).
Rasmussen Reports seemingly has better polling methods:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/State%20by%20stat
They got every state right, except for Iowa (which was very close).
The $40k is for the booze and the hookers. The techs will have to gamble with their own money, though.
The latest Slashdot meme.
I didn't see where Diebold threatened anyone. The clerk was not too bright to just call in some group to evaluate the state's machines. He clearly didn't have the authority to do so and will undoubtedly lose his position.
Hmmm...given the tone of the submission ("make sure the 'right' candidates win", "Diebold goon", "company witch doctor") I think I know who the submitter is. Bruce Funk, step away from the computer. You are not the hero whistleblower you thought you'd be. You're a future ex-clerk who clearly didn't know what he was doing.
Look, I'm all for openness with these voting machines but I'd be much happier if some knucklehead didn't have the power to give anyone unsupervised access to the voting machines.
The giant paper ballot system used in Cook County two weeks ago worked pretty well. There were problems with counting the vote, but they were with memory packs from the electronic touchscreen voting units. There were a large number of races (thanks to a ridiculous number of judge retention elections), and the two sided enormous ballots were there afte scanning in case of a needed recount.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
This is not about a dishonest paranoid company covering up their rigged machines. The problem comes from the top. Look to your electoral system and who controls it, because you don't!
http://votescam.com/
Note also that the machines were used after a closed door meeting of the county clerk's supervisors..
No sane designer would allow anything to be loaded onto such a machine after construction time. If you need to replace the code, you should replace the motherboard entirely. That is the only guaranteed way of ensuring that the software and hardware fully match up.
Ideally, such machines should have either no Operating System at all, or have a very minimal hardware abstraction layer. OSKit would almost be overkill. The reason being that you don't want to multitask, memory management can all be static (as all structures are of fixed size and number), drivers will be minimal and linear, the system will be fixed in design, and you don't need any kind of system library.
None of this is rocket science. No, correction - a lot of rocket computers are built along similar sorts of ideas, as they need to be robust, fast, efficient and secure.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
evil
Black Box Voting demonstrated in Florida that whoever has access to the flash memory card, used to keep track of the votes can determine the results of the voting on that machine: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/1559 5.html?1141791589. No tinkering with the machine is necessary.
I would say even the submitter's point of view is not biased enough - Diebold should get a corporation death penalty for even agreeing to provide voting machines without paper trail. This is such no-brainer, that no amount of outrage is sufficient.
i'm really hard-pressed finding a better application for free / open source software than voting systems. it's astonishing that this alternative is not the foremost issue in every public debate on the topic, yet in the popular media you almost never hear about it.
free software, open standards, open file formats, no software patents.
From reading the article, it is within the contract (and I think the law of that county) that a third party may evaluate the integrity of the machine. Furthermore, everything that was done to the machine was documented with notes and video (I got this from blackboxvoting.org). Furthermore their initial quoted fee was $1200 per machine, and then it jumped to $40,000, I can think of no other reason for this other than intimidation (extortion) of other voting officials who DARE challenge their machines. The way I'm reading your statement, would you be happy with a used car salesman threating to charge you to ensure the "integrity" of your vehicle if you had a mechanic check it over? Allowing Diebold to certify themselves is like letting the theives watch the bank, "Sure, the money is still there. We haven't done anything. No, you can't check yourself, and if you do, we'll charge you a fee to ensure you weren't the one to take the money."
Has anyone bothered to look at "the third party"'s website? http://www.blackboxvoting.org/ Those Diebold machines didn't seem too stable a week ago...
Bruce Funk ... The guy who called for the investigation... funk@co.emery.ut.us
... The guy who decided that they're going to continue using diebold machines... commission@co.emery.ut.us ... State Elections Director ... elections@utah.gov
Ira Hatch
Michael Cragun
Also check out this site:
http://utahcountvotes.org/
I wonder why Diebold built a box in the first place that is so easy to tinker with. Well I don't really but still I wonder why they didn't think of an excuse for it... Anyways here's my solution to the problem. Let's use XBOX360s! They're secure (for now) at least a lot securer than the crap Diebold is peddling!
I don't own one but as far as I know - mind you as far as I know - there's only one hack modifying the drive firmware that allows people to run backups of official game cdroms. Up to now there is no way to get your own code to execute on the box all thanks to code signing and a chain of trust that begins with a key buried in the silicone of one of the microprocessor in the box.
Well I guess one thing to say about this is that Microsoft intends to sell millions of these boxes and each box is calculated to generate a certain revenue on software titles and services sold but hey... I think voting machines deserve at least the same level of security as the oh so special premium content of the hallowed content providers and even though they may sell only a few ten thousand of these voting machines... hell I guess a machines that cost $40,000 to get someone to look them over, I guess something like that probably costs at least $150,000 a piece and so looking at 150,000 x 10000 = $1,500,000,000, 1.5 billion dollars of revenue I guess we can expect security here that makes the engineers who worked for Microsoft on the X360 project weep (as they will soon but that's a another story).
There is an update to the story as well:
http://www.sltrib.com/utahpolitics/ci_3649394
...but I hardly find a tin-foil-hat conspiracy-theory rant worthy of posting as an article on Slashdot. Interesting to note this in comparison to articles in the recent past that I know were rejected.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Like this item
Since I'm not familiar with the current regulations regarding voting in the US I have to ask the question: "Am I as a voter able to cast a vote without using a voting machine if I don't trust the voting machine?"
Anyway - I think that the regulations concerning gambling machines should be applied to voting machines as well.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
To assume these touch screens are well designed is a huge leap. My bank (BofA) recently changed to Diebold ATMs, and I wish they would go back to the old hardware. I am thinking about leaving them over it. The bigger screens and fonts might help someone with poor eye sight, but I would rather not have the amount I'm withdrawing broadcast to everyone in eye shot. Each action creates a series of bright flashes and loud beeps that begin well before the machine actually lets me complete the action, and continue to well after I've completed the task it's "reminding" me to complete.
It might as well yell "Hey, this guy wants to withdraw $200, and this flashing slot is about to be filled with money in a few seconds! He just got it! $200 out of this now-empty slot right here! Look! It's still flashing and beeping! Hide around the corner now!"
In general, I wont trust any voting or ATM machine that is not open to testing by a third party security audit, to be chosen by the machine owner (in this case the subject of the article). If Diebold wants to void the warranty on every attempt at a security audit, there's obviously something very wrong with their system.
It's not the voters who decide on the candidate who is elected. It is those counting the votes. - Paraphrase from someone I don't want to look up right now...
I doubt you've seen this with the internal printer. Remember the parent said: "When you use a Diebold ATM, it prints a paper trail inside the box, and gives you a printed receipt with a transaction number that can be matched to both the internal database and to the paper trail inside. If the printer inside jams, it stops accepting transactions."
ATMs will continue running if the external receipt printer jams/runs out of paper/etc. But they stop accepting transactions if the internal printer (that prints the internal paper audit trail) jams.
rage, rage against the dying of the light
Okay, first, I also have to take issue with the summary. The language is entirely inflamatory and biased. I think the submission should have been a bit more on the mature side. It's a bit irrelevant, though, as I decided to read the article anyway.
Here we have this guy who is acting on conscience and also to cover his ass. After all, he is responsible for the integrity of the election activity in his area and has no say in the selection or verification of the equipment used? Smells just like "set up" to me. There's nothing wrong with wanting to call in a third party, but perhaps someone other than an enemy of Diebold who already has opinions about them.
I say this already having my opinions of Diebold. "Secret" or otherwise unauditable election data is poison to the republic of the United States. (I would say democracy, but c'mon! we don't have a democracy and our representatives don't represent anyone but the highest contributor.) Diebold has already been sued and blocked out of over government election activies leaving plenty of reasonable doubt for other governmental bodies to second-guess their choice of equipment.
These signs of corruption going ignored like this are really quite disheartening.
The real question in MY mind is how to verify the integrity of the election results as a whole.
p g
It seems to me that the machine should only run open source code, compiled with an open source compiler, and a checksum (or better yet a 1-to-1 file comparison) run on the executable. The open source code would be made available for download, along with the executable, and anybody who wanted to check could compare the results of what they downloaded and home-compiled with the running executable on the voting machine.
What's more, the machine should send the election results to multiple "counter" servers (i.e. anybody/everybody who wants to "listen in", real time, would be able to do so they would simply register a listener server (open source, available for download, and with same compiler). As the election goes along, all the listener servers would receive a steady stream of voting results. In such a case, Any discrepancy would raise a red flag.
There would also have to be a means of REJECTING repeat voters, non-entity voters and hacker voters. At poll close, the votes could be COUNTED on the lan and phoned in. Comparing that number with the number of votes sent from that polling place would be a reasonable cross-check.
A good start, but perhaps more would be needed..?
PS
Sry commandmer taco but that claim you made in the summary is false. It would be very difficult to hack a diebold as a basic voter, since it uses a touch screen and has no keyboard. If you think you can hack that through the touchscreen then give it a TRY. (but dont get thrown in jail!) =P
http://scdc.sccs.swarthmore.edu/diebold/machine.j
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
. . . just make up endless conspiracy theories about evil corporations and the "Right" candidates.
How the hell did this rant get accepted. I thought /. was "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters," not "Spew for Suckers. Crap We Make Up."
What?
Voting machines need to be secure, auditable, easy to use, and inexpensive to operate. They have to accurately and quickly tabulate votes and they have to assure the secrecy of an individuals vote. They need to be flexible enough to handle the voting requirements of a wide variety of precincts and they need to be secure and also fault-tolerant enough to protect the votes if something like a power-outage happens.
Some years ago I rode a bus on occasion. As I boarded the bus, I'd ask for a transfer. The driver would push a button that would spit out a small card with printing on the front and a mag-stripe on the back. When I got on the next bus I gave the driver the card and he slipped it into a box that read the stripe and lit up either a green or red light. The printing on the card was purely for my information, all the information the driver needed was on the stripe on the back of the card.
It seems to me that a card of this nature could be the perfect solution for an electronic voting system. It would have pre-printed marks that identify it by precinct and would be issued to a voter in the same manner paper ballots are issued today. The voter could step into a booth with an electronic device (touch screen computer), insert the virgin card and place his vote. Once voting is completed the vote could be registered inside the machine and recorded to the card which would then fall into a bin. These saved cards could then be used to verify the results of the votes that were cast if there was any doubt of the counts made by the machine. All of this would only take a couple of bytes per vote, it would be inexpensive, secure, auditable, fast, simple, and fault-tolerant.
The third party discoverad the memory discrepancy. I am reading this as Diebold tests and aditional fonts added by Diebold are cited as the cause of the discrepancy. Also, why would dDiebold have to do an audit? There should be a way for the election commission to do an audit.
A bias, not 'an' bias you idiot.
I suspect this is part of the problem.
I've long held the view that the most effective way to get a reasonably democratic political system is to have the electorate vote on exactly two things: deciding the Big Issues (constitutional changes and the like) directly; and electing the representatives who will decide on the Little Issues for them.
My own experience, from running a medium-sized, not-for-profit organisation, is that few people have the time to fully research every choice that the management must make, even if they have the inclination. If you rely too much on mass voting, you get well-intentioned people actually voting against their best interests through lack of understanding, failure to see the big picture and appreciate the wider or longer-term implications of their vote, etc. Thus you can't make all the detailed little decisions by consultation with the entire electorate, or even in a big committee; it ceases to represent the best interests of the electorate beyond a certain point.
What does work, IME, is:
- creating a basic framework (in national politics, that's your constitution, basic legal processes, etc.) within which a given administration will work
- electing representatives who you think will act most in alignment with your personal preferences on lesser issues
- letting them get on with representing you.
Naturally, such representatives may still consult their electorate on any given issue, and any given voter may contact their representative to express a view on any given subject. A representative who fails to consult adequately when it is appropriate risks not being re-elected, so as long as your terms of office are of reasonable duration, there is relatively low risk of abuse. You can also have a safeguard where if a sufficiently large number of voters want to vote on a particular subject, they can force a vote with or without the consent of their representatives.This removes entirely the need for routine voting on minor issues like how to use a building or what to put in water. I suspect that almost all such issues are best left to be decided by representatives with the time to investigate the implications properly anyway. Joe Public just won't know in a lot of cases, and the voting will essentially be a random number generator with a small bias due to people who actually do understand any given decision.
The only remaining question then becomes how big is big enough to vote on separately, and what structure of representatives will you use: do you elect just the national legislature, or local officials too; do you elect major public offices like the heads of public services or just the political guys?
Once you've sorted that out, hopefully you never have more than a handful of people to elect at once. Have your voting machine tally up the voter's choice for each decision/election electronically, but have it also print separate, human-readable slips, on different paper colours for different decisions, and have the voter put these slips in matching colour-coded boxes. Bingo, you get instant results from the machines when voting closes, but you have an easy manual verification of the count if it's close and/or challenged.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Oddly enough, when working for a computer company in southwest Missouri we had to send a hard drive off to a clean room outfit becuase an office worker wiped out 30 days of ATM data out of thier antiquated. Never attribute to malice that which can be sufficiently explained by ignorance.
-- Please don't use a sig that makes me hate you, do that in your post
I went to a demo-day for voting machines. When I got to the voting booth no one could see what I was doing. So I flipped over the machine, and removed the back panel. I yanked out the voting flash cards. put them in my pocket. Then I took them back out of my pocket and put them back into the machine. This was all done while two vendors stood 3 feet away watching just me. their was no curtain either, just the carol enclosure was sufficient to obsure their view.
Not making this up.
I noticed that the next time they cam to town thie newer model which has a paper logger attached no longer fit in the voting carol, So it was mounted on a stand and this would have been slightly harder to flip upside down. On the otherhand if I were a poll worker this would not have been a problem. The places where the tags and seals attach is easily defeated since you can snap out the plastic hinges.
The point here is not that you fould not make one with a better design but that they chose not to. Just as diebold chose to use interpreted code on the ballot configuration cards that has the authority to re-write the vote files.
SO it's not that you cannot make a secure system--eventually--but that there isn't even the slightest effort to attend to some mac-truck size holes. they know they are their and they prefer to hide them in propriatary obfuscation not secure them. These are not people we can just trust because they seem nice. You have every right to be 100% skeptical because every time someone looks hard we find they are not fixed right.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Your used car salesman analogy doesn't fit the situation. I want outsiders to check the system. I don't want the clerk to be able to bring in whoever he wants to have unsupervised access to the machines. Blackboxvoting.org is not impartial either.
I don't understand why they cannot make a voting machine that individual voters can verify their votes at a later time through the internet. Also, hardware/software verification using the same technique as the gaming comission for the gambling industry.
No.
Next.
Blogging because I can...
This still doesn't excuse the fact that several memory cards that are supposed to store voting results came from the factory nearly full (Diebold claims its 20+mb of fonts, on a card for voting tabulations?) I would rather have honest election results instead of a pretty voting screen any time.
Figured I'd dig up a means of communicating with Utah's Lt. Gov. Office in case anybody wants to let them know how misguided they are: Lieutenant Governor's Office
Computers are over-used. Why the hell do we need computer-operated toasters (yes, the good ol' simple toaster is often microprocessor-assisted)? Computers are overkill for deciding how light or dark your toast should be.
/, if I didn't think so) but I think we over-use them. Modern society treats the computer as the one-size-fits-all BFH. Computers are possibly the worst solution for elections because:
Likewise, computers are probably the wrong tool for voting. Accountability is removed, we've now put elections at risk of hardware crashes, software hacks, network mishaps, and so forth. Not only that, if the system IS hacked, how does one find that vote I cast against Hillary in the 2008 election? Are votes in hacked disgregarded in districts where the system has been tampered with (bad), or is the final result delayed until another election can be scheduled on a brand-new system (not quite as bad, but still bad?), or on paper (which takes us back to where we were in 2004)?
Computers are great tools (I wouldn't be on
- If networked, can be tampered with remotely, so no amount of police officers guarding over the machines can prevent against crackers
- If wireless, can be interfered with very easily
- Unless hardened, a highly-directional antenna with a moderate-power transmitter can interfere with the box's operation
- Where is the paper trail in the event of the above?
- Paper ballots can be counted under the supervision of both major parties and independents. Not possible with electronically-cast votes.
- If an exploit at the voting console is discovered, what can prevent ballot stuffing? With paper ballots, it's easy; if you drop more than one ballot in, at minimum you will be disallowed from dropping it in the box. Best scanario, you get arrested and charged with a federal crime for being such a dumbass.
In a republic where the representatives are elected democratically, abandoning the paper ballot is folly. Even with the pain of Florida elections arising because a handful of idiots cannot follow very clear arrows and directions, the paper ballot is the very best tool for electing officials. The election is documented with physical evidence, very easily supervised, and tampering is very easily discovered immediately and the idiots responsible being held responsible with very little investigation required.
Leave electronic voting technology up to surveys, unofficial NON-BINDING referenda (e.g., a referendum put forth for representatives to gather official majority public opinion), and the private sector.
Heck, even in IT, computers are not always the best solution for tracking all data or accomplishing all tasks.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I don't know what this machine is running, but it should boot off a floppy. It should dhcp a network address, establish and encrypted session with a voting server, then record votes for candidates both to the remote server and to a local printer.
The local printer should be a specialty job, with some sort of transparent plastic window over a larger opaque assembly. After entering the choices, the voter should see the paper record of their votes printed - when the voter leaves, their record should stream past the transparent window.
In this setup, the whole voting system could report counts at any time, and every effort will have been expended to have the voter verify their choices. The final tally comes from the paper tape.
This whole thing should be dead simple. What is all the fuss?
The original comment was:
..."
... you guessed it: where's that Fark.com tag?
"First what they do is print confusing ballads in florida to turn people against paper ballets
See, the ballads were printed in a confusing way so that the orchestra members have to keep skipping around between measures when reading the score.
The odd arrangement caused a huge amount of disconnect between the members and the result was cacophony. The audience had expected to see a "paper" ballet performance - a type of puppet stage show. Due to the noted factors, this emerging artform was met with harsh critical scorn.
Oh yeah, and all this happened in
In Diebold's defense, any machine handed over to an investigator should not be trusted again, for the very same reasons.
The fact that it's Diebold should make the machine untrusted. Why states have even entertained the notion of purchasing Diebold equipment is beyond me.
Having already spent the money, I'd agree with the notion of making them untrusted once inspected. However, given that it's Diebold we're talking about, if I were the state I'd say, "We just spent $27 million on new voting machines, but in order to insure their integrity, we are going to select a random sample, subject them to a rigorous review and inspection, and then throw them out."
An anonymous reader writes "From the Salt Lake Tribune: a wary county clerk called in BlackBoxVoting.org to test the integrity of Diebold voting fraud machines, part of a recent $27 million statewide purchase (to make sure that only the "Right" candidates win).
Well, that "anonymous reader" called them voting fraud machines. Somehow I doubt that the company advertises them as such.
No accusatory tone of voice detected here, eh?
The article on the indian voting system quotes the "NASA space pen vs Russian Pencil" story.
NASA didn't develop the "space pen", it was developed by Fisher (a private company) who made a huge profit off it. NASA paid the same price per pen that any other customer did.
Before Fisher developed the "Space Pen", both space programs used pencils. Afterwards, both programs used "Space Pens".
And the reason they don't use pencils is that conductive graphite dust and flammable pencil shavings are a really really bad idea in a pure oxygen atmosphere.
Here's the real "chicken-little" issue: Several of the top Diebold executives are Republican supporters. "Non-Republicans" have been using this and numerous other accusations to punish Diebold for their support and their hope is to sabotage any contracts they might get for these machines. If you can think it, it has already been suggested as a boogeyman scenario by these nuts. Some issues are/were valid, but most are nothing more than political garbage.
But alas, mod points I have none.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
I'm in Illinois. I was happy with our new machines.
They weren't Diebold (the company who promised the Republicans they would win).
Our machines spit out a printed record of your vote, which you can check to be sure is what you actually voted. You then put that record in a sleeve, and the election judge puts the whole thing in a metal box, just like they used to do with the old punch cards.
If worse comes to worse, you can do a recount manually.
Why is Diebold still in business, I wonder?
You can do all those things, but it has to be done to physical things, by hand. Changing 10.000 votes is a pretty big industrial undertaking.
With data, you can alter results to anything in milliseconds. One vote or a million doesn't make much difference, once you're in the system.
If there can be an "advanced tamper protection schemes" that makes digital systems even safer, that's wonderful, but I haven't heard of anything real that's worthy of the name, and i have serious doubts it's even possible, given the nature of computers.
On March 18, Black Box Voting released the first part of findings from an examination of the Diebold TSx touch-screen machines in Emery County, Utah.
Diebold has responded. Harri Hursti and also Security Innovation Inc. have rebutted Diebold's initial explanation. Diebold then came up with a new explanation, while trying to maneuver Emery County's elections chief into resigning.
Bruce Funk, the elected official who has run elections in Emery County for 23 years, noticed a critical shortage in flash memory/storage in seven of his 40 brand new Diebold machines. He arranged for an independent evaluation, a right granted to Utah county officials in the Diebold contract. Black Box Voting secured the services of Harri Hursti and also Security Innovation, Inc. for the Emery County evaluation.
The initial assessment was not encouraging: The memory was so low it appeared likely to compromise elections held on the affected machines, and the most likely explanations were all pretty bad: 1) Different programs on the machines 2) Data already residing on the machines from use elsewhere 3) Flash memory near the end of its life cycle.
1. Diebold claims low memory due to a variation in fonts
According to the Deseret Morning News, Diebold spokesman David Bear claimed that the critical shortage in memory was due to different fonts loaded on certain machines.
"Spokesman David Bear said that some of the machines were programmed with more font options than other machines, which is accounting for most of the discrepancy in available memory, although the types of tests run on the machines before shipping could also take up memory.
Diebold has not explained why some machines would have different fonts than others.
Actually, the memory discrepancies were as large as 20MB, and the low memory triggered text on the TSx machine to flip to RED, clearly an alert that there was a problem. Hursti and Security Innovation cast doubt on the font explanation:
Hursti: "Fonts, which there are only few, can explain few 100 kilobytes [each] at the most, not 20 meg we have."
Security Innovation, Inc.: "I went into the tool that builds Windows CE and after adding ALL of the fonts that it contains they *totaled* to 4 megs. Harri is right in that each font individually was small with the largest being a meg but most being like 30k-60k. There exists the possibility that they created a custom font but I don't know why...The only one that's any where near big enough (22meg) is a UNICODE one that can represent things like Japanese characters, Chinese characters.
(Note that Emery County Utah does not have a Japanese/Chinese population sufficient to warrant such special fonts, and even if it did, if such fonts use up memory to the extent that machines experience critical storage problems, that is a significant defect. The existence of Asian language fonts on Utah machines would be consistent with taking delivery on machines previously used in California.)
2. New Diebold explanation: "There is an A, B, and C version"
On Monday Mar. 27, Diebold attended a meeting in Emery County and here they claimed there were actually several versions delivered to Utah. Now, bear in mind that all are the TSx 4.6.4, but in this tape recorded meeting, Diebold stated that within this there is an A, B, and C version.
The main question, of course, is:
Is it the A, B, or the C version that is the certified version?
In the mean time, Diebold is hoping Bruce Funk will hurry up and resign
Diebold's immediate response to Funk's decision to have his machines independently tested was to threaten to charge over $1,200 to check the machines tested to make sure they were suitable for elections.
This brings to mind the question -- why did Diebold deliver machines with memory
Utah's Diebold machines print a readable paper trail that enters the traditional locked paper ballot box. So there is a very good way to verify results at least in Utah. This was one of the election commision's requirements when they selected the machines, a verifiable paper trail for every vote.
Pretend you built and configured a server for a company and they called you a week later and demanded that you come on-site and fix their malfunctioning server. Then when you get there they told you that they had a third party install other software on the server to simply "inspect" the installation and now the box doesn't work properly. What do you think you'd have to say about that?
/. doesn't like Diablo, ahem, Diebold. But the concept that messing with internals voids a warranty is commonly understood. Maybe you don't think it should apply to voting machines. But don't make voidable warranties out to be evil schemes devised solely to keep people from trying to figure out whether they're being screwed.
I understand
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The Republican will win every time. Now, Florida or Ohio on the other hand, Diebold has reason to rig elections in those places!
Please remember that this question came up as part of an official investigation into alleged sexual harrassment and violent rape committed by Clinton when he was Governor of Arkansas. If he had been Republican, the feminists and Democrats would have absolutely crucified him, and would not have cared one whit about how "personal" the matter was. Plenty of Republicans have been hounded out of office for less (eg Senator Packwood.)
I would also point out that adultery is not considered a "personal" matter by government agencies that require a security clearance, because of the risk of blackmail. Clinton would not qualify to be a janitor in the CIA headquarters building, due to his sexual history.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
I am more worried about Diebold "hacking" their own machines than any voter.
>Another explanation: selective polling and oversampling of women (this
>is definitely done) in the exit polls.
Keep in mind that the reported number would *not* be weighted 80% women and 20% men, however. Instead, in this example, the average for women would be added to the percentage of actual voters expected to be female, that for men by their percentage, and the two added.
It actually goes a lot deeper than that, with correction factors and weighting by subgroup.
>There also seems to be a trend that conservatives are less likely to
>want to answer political surveys than liberals.
I call this the Royko effect in my statistics classes. In 1980, President Carter conceded with the poles still open in the west (which cost his party house seats--when an election is called, many voters from the losing party stay home. This also happened in the Florida panhandle with Bush/Gore with the incorrect announcement that polls were closed and premature calling of the election for Gore). Carter's concession was based on projections from exit polls.
In the aftermath, networks pledged not to call states untill the polls closed. Mike Royko went father in his syndicated column, telling voters that they had a moral obligation to lie to exit polls. Some polls, missing the issue, then added a, "Do you read Mike Royko?" question, apparently expecting a tru8thful response there from someone alreeady lying to them . . .
hawk
. . . why an EPROM? Use a PROM or masked ROM . . .
hawk
I agree. The fact that all machines weren't 100% identical makes the need for 3rd party oversight that much more obvious. Before each election every machine should be minty fresh...wiped completely and all reloaded with the same baseline code. These didn't even come from the factory that way.
The clerk could have gotten enough attention without inviting Diebold-haters to the party...I think that's detracting from the main problem.
Ira Hatch, brother of state senator, pleads 'no contest' in poaching case Not some one I'd trust with firearms. That he got off with a slap on the hand shows that nepotism is alive and well.
Who posts this drivel? I read it twice... and the only conclusion I see is "anonymous reader" who posted it will eventually end up going "postal" on the steps of Diebold's corporate headquarters. And CMDR Taco, for letting that stuff go through? Ridiculous. No wonder /. is dying.
Bush won a count, a recount, a machine recount, a HAND recount, and then, much later, a PRESS OBSERVED recount.
There was **no** count that ever had Gore winning.
But the Bush-haters don't want you to hear that fact. Bush won by a little over 500 votes. Slim, but true. And they still are crying about it, apparently.
When you put it like that, it sounds so simple. All I have to do is mark dozens of individual slips and then sort them into the correct boxes myself instead of going to enormous effort of checking boxes on a couple pages and then dropping them into a single ballot box. What the hell were we thinking when we set up the single ballot system?
Do you ever wonder why, when there is some question of wrong-doing on the part of the president, he always tries to thwart any investigation into his actions? If he were innocent of anything untoward, wouldn't a transparent investigation serve to vindicate him and prove his detractors wrong?
Do you ever wonder why it's the Republicans who insist on using Diebold machines, when they've been proven to be easily hackable and consistently show faulty results that favour the Republican candidates? Do you ever think that if your party was fair and honest, they would insist on using machines that ensured an accurate vote count?
Cheney, who is still on the Halliburton payroll, keeps saying that he has 'earmarked' those earnings for charity in the future. Do you ever think about why he doesn't just donate the money now?
Do you ever wonder where your tax dollars have gone, when you hear that the national debt is now at $9 Trillion dollars, and all you see is the cutting of funding to health needs, education, transportation systems, etc., instead of the expansion of any of those things?
Do you ever wonder why Bill Frist is still being described as a 'GOP presidential hopeful', when he's under investigation for stock fraud and charitable donation fraud? Do you ever think that if your party had ANYONE to run who is NOT likely to be indicted on one charge or another, they'd be touting him as the likely candidate?
Do you ever wonder why the Noble Cause we're fighting for in Iraq keeps changing from week to week? Do you ever think that if that cause was something clear-cut and truthful, Bush could have told Cindy Sheehan what it was, and saved himself a lot of bad publicity?
Do you ever wonder why your president keeps telling you how engaged he is in the running of the country, while at the same time he keeps referring to things 'he didn't know anything about', like the Dubai ports deal?
Do you ever wonder why your president has degrees from Harvard and Yale, but he can't speak for more than two minutes without annihilating the English language? Do you ever think about why, if he's so smart, he failed at every business venture he was ever involved in? Do you look at the national debt and wonder if there isn't some 'fuzzy math' at play here?
Do you ever wonder why your president constantly talks about being pro-life, when he gleefully executed people as the Governor of Texas, and laughed about the fact on national television during the 2000 primaries?
Do you ever wonder why your president and his administration hold themselves out to be 'good Christians', while they embrace torture, rendition, and secret prisons?
Do you ever wonder why your self-proclaimed born-again Christian president took an oath, on the holy Bible, to uphold the Constitution, but then says he is not bound by the laws set out in that same document?
Do you ever wonder why your elected officials do their utmost to protect the unborn, but do nothing to improve the lives of the already-born?
Do you ever wonder why your elected officials say they are representing your best interests, when they support laws that put the interests of Big Oil, Big Pharma, and Big Business above your interests every time?
Do you ever wonder why your elected officials are stuffing their own pockets with Abramoff money, while at the same time they're swearing they never even met the man?
Do you ever wonder why your elected officials are always scolding you about living within your means, while they vote themselves raises every time the cost of living goes up? Do you ever think about all of the extended trips they take to exotic places on your dime, to discuss how bad things are back home?
Do you ever wonder why your party members invariably respond to legitimate questions about their policies by attacking the person who had the temerity to pose the question? Do you ever think that maybe their policies are indefensible, and that's why they consistently resort to that tactic?
Do you ever
This graphic elegantly summarizes the problem with many types of electronic voting machines, especially Diebold's.
MAC | A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
.... because every WARY county clerk is being entrusted to ensure that these machines aren't tampered with, yet have the greatest opportunity to do so themselves....
Their internal e-mails (now leaked) confirm what I said:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0310/S00211.htm
People care about money but they don't care about their vote. It's too complicated. People don't realize that they are putting their freedom in trust of a system that also runs the voting. It really means our votes don't matter AT ALL, because at any time the results can be altered in thousands of ways. A few top guys get together, a few Diebold employees on payroll, bing, done, finished. And if we keep getting the same sort of people in there we have been (which we will, because it's not our choice anymore), they will continue to stack courts, increase presidential/executive authority, pass laws, amend constitutions, etc. that further this activity so the next election they can be even sneakier.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
We're always ambushing un-expecting websites with tons of traffic from slashdot, well maybe we can put this to good use. Put a link up to Diebold's website in the top part of this site on EVERY PAGE and see where it gets us. If nothing else we can cost them a little bit more money by eating some bandwidth up. Could be a stupid idea though so you didn't hear it from me.
If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up. - Comedian Mitch Hedberg R.I.P. 03/30/68-2/24/05
Need I (as a European) remind you that you do not have 'the right to bear arms' to go duck-hunting?
I always understood that you had that right to take away the power of gouverment from those who would gouvern you, the people, in a manner that you, the people, choose not to be gouverned.
That's what the guns are for, aren't they?
But maybe I am wrong...
why our Federal Government, which maintains standards for everything from automobile quarter-panels to fruit punch, can't lay out and enforce a set of standards for something as basic as a goddamn electronic counter. This pisses me off, and the fact that the Feds are apparently unwilling to implement such standards indicates that they really are not serious about accurate, transparent and trustworthy voting. This is not rocket science. Furthermore, given Diebold's awful track record regarding, well, pretty much everything they do I think they should simply be banned from selling equipment for this purpose. I'm not sure what else they have to do to show they cannot be trusted. Unless, of course, the Feds step up to the plate, create and enforce a solid set of quality standards for voting equipment ... in that case Diebold would have no choice but to clean up their act.
I'm not holding my breath.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
My friend tried withdraw $100 from a Wamu ATM (in Santa Monica) about 5 years ago, and it only gave him $60. $104 (fees too) came out of his checking account. He went inside the branch to get his $40 and they asked him top fill out a form and they would count the money in the ATM and compare to the transactions of the day etc... He filled out the form and they never called him back. He went back to complain and they told him to take it up with Wells Fargo (his bank). Wells Fargo told him it was a WAMU issue because it was their ATM machine. At that point he gave up and decided never to use a Wamu ATM again.
The lesson of the story:
Bank ATMs are not perfect.
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. -Confucius
A broad outline of what happened to our state (and my county, Scioto County) because of Diebold machines is here. http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/20 05/1593
The article talks about memory cards and their problems, but there were about a dozen or more other problems with the setup, even disregarding the possibility of hacking.
Diebold has sold voting machines to Utah. Diebold is evil. They want to bully a poor innocent election clerk.
Funny as it sounds, that's exactly how it went here in my local county, and I was involved in the contracting process (A losing battle...word from "on high" was that you either choose Diebold or get no money from the state.) I pushed for another company because the Diebold submission was a load of technical crap.
And, best of all, nothing I've seen or read about since then (North Carolina, anyone?) has done anything to change my mind.
Never confuse movement with action. --Hemingway
Rather than giving up, he should have contacted the Attorney General for the state and filed an official complaint. Odds are the banks would have sorted it out between themselves if there was an external entity bearing down on them.
-30-
There are at least three reasons why we shouldn't trust their dirty, nasty, evil b0xen:a rd.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=11874&mesg_ id=19911/
2 /
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/dubo
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/10/1172/905
http://avirubin.com/vote.pdf/
Violation of warranty? Sure. I can see that.
Still, nobody is answering the question: "why on earth are computers the best answer to solving the handicaped voter problem?"
I could hire some little old ladies for minimum wage and get them to help disadvantaged people cast their ballots for less than $27 million!
Or, at the very least, if these machines are supposed to be SO easy to use, just get one or two of them for each precinct. You don't need every parking stall to be handicap accessible, and you don't need all of your voting booths to be, either.
In my mind, Bruce Funk is the only sane election official in the whole state.
This sig is inappropriate in a post-9/11 world.
Historically that has often not been how things turn out. Ds (or Rs) change registration shortly before an election. Then their D (or R) buddys appoint them to the election board to represent the other side. See Florida 2000 punch ballot counting procedure for a perfect example of attempts to work that system. Even Clinton called for the voting to continue (not the vote counting), he knew the counters were 'voting' as they 'counted'. They even tried to move the 'voting' to a back room. You can't believe that was a good system?
Elections were routinely fixed using the very methods you advocate. Granted it was more blue collar vote tampering but it was very effective.
And none of this discussion even addresses registration fraud. Which has been rampent in the US for at least 100 years. Untill we get ID requirements to vote the machine and count error will remain much smaller then the registration error (or as they said in Chicago, 'Vote early and often').
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I had a contract job in which I was part of a team that was responsible for unpacking, testing, calibrating, and certifying about 600 ES&S optical-scan oting machines. We didn't get $250/hr, obviously, but the actual testing and calibration procedures from ES&S took, at most, 10-15 minutes per machine. Input was compared with output, DAC sensor values were checked and adjusted, the printout was left dangling from the machine along with our certification sheet, and it went back in the carry-case and was signed off on.
Granted, machines with a paper audit trail are somewhat easier to verify the correct functionality of (hence the ENTIRE debate), but 40K for somebody to audit a closed system is still utterly ridiculous. This smacks of **AA inflationary numbers to get attention.
For those posters such as the AC I am replying to I would like to draw your attention to the troll tag. What is the point of attacking a summary that confesses to being a troll? The summary is honest, the clerk is honest, diebold could even be honset but their machines are not transparent and not auditable, therefore the machines cannot be trusted for election purposes.
Having said that I will make my own trollish statements so that you and the rest of the AC's can continue to distract attention away from the substance of the article...
"Die bold" has taken "lobbying" to the next level, now "lobbyists" cannot only earmak legislation, they can also earmark the next president.
The clerk is a life long public servant who is quiting and making as much noise as he can. It takes strength of character (or insanity) to deliberately scuttle your carrer and pension for the principle of serving the public.
The clerk should be hailed as a modern day Paul Revere, Diebold machines should be destroyed with safe but highly entertaining explosions.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Whoever modded this down is a turd and a government shill.
This is the most poorly written slashdot post I have seen so far. Very dissappointing.
That is not what happens either in the UK or Australia, parties offer candiates that follow a uniform policy but individuals have differing views on what the policy should be. Candiates can also be independent, a candidate who stands for a party is not obliged to stay with that party, they can swap sides or declare independence (not a common senario).
... a mid-level cop?
The difference seems to be that the in the US, citizens vote on the Sherrif, the school board, the local magistrate,,. The US votes on people and issues that under a UK style parlimentry system "ministers" in conjunction with the public service is expected to manage.
Also I don't know about the US, but with local councils in Australia (and presumably in the UK) only ratepayers can vote, the council is funded by the ratepayers (land owners), the council is responsible for organising it's own election (within the laws), schools are managed by the education department with input from parents through the "PTA", the Sherrif is
From my point of view it could be said that the US system attempts to "micro-manage" government. BTW: What the hell is the "Tuesday" thing all about, no wonder nobody votes!
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
...it sounded like, "diebold sucks, fraud is bad, open source rocks, hate companies!" I am on a volunteer fire department with a guy who works for diebold, and from his perspective, diebold doesn't seem like that bad of a company. He old does repair and maintenance on ATM Machines though, nothing to do with voting machines.
Sig: I stole this sig.
Here's the first part of the report from Black Box Voting. Note that there are several problems that turn up in the inspection of the machines, not just the memory discrepancies.
For those people who are saying that what Bruce Funk and Black Box Voting did violated the agreements with Diebold, however from a different article on the Black Box Voting website:
I've also heard people say that Black Box Voting should have made a better record of thier activities, ie videotaping the whole thing, to those people, please note this paragraph from yet another article:
Windows is a bonfire, Linux is the sun. Linux only looks smaller if you lack perspective.
Recently, my local bank branch had it's ATM's replaced. Not more than 15 years overdue, mind you.
And just what greeted my eyes when I next saw them? Yup. Diebold.
Shudder.....
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
There is no such thing as a font virus.
Not as treasonous as a Nazi soldier that broke the chain of command and let some Jews escape.
Officials have the reponsibility to disobey illegal orders.
So I flipped over the machine, and removed the back panel. I yanked out the voting flash cards. put them in my pocket.
Goombah, you're my new hero!
If this wasn't so scary, It'd make me laugh.
A. Friend
Between you and me and the screen of confidentiality afforded to anomyous cowards: They're not all that sophistcated really once you're on the inside. They're sloppy and they are only now developing a real sense of security. I used to work for a european bank. Well yes the crown jewels to that national ATM / debit card system ... a bunch of 3DES keys that are used to validate online pin entry for the banking institutes customers, that was locked up in proprietary crypto modules made by Gieseke and Devrient and locked in a room in order to get in that room two people had to swipe their cards and enter a pin. However, I had full access to the production machines and the oracle databases and it would have been the matter of maybe five or six SQL statements to have created a new account in the system as well as transferred millions to that account. I don't think they would have ever said anything or done anything about except renumerate their customers losses because when stuff like this happens banks usually tend to keep quiet about it.
Did I do it? Naw. I'm a chicken and if I did I wouldn't be bragging about it. (Or would I?). You decide.
Last Updated: 03/24/2006 1:49 AM MST Rolly: A real shock for voters?
http://www.sltrib.com/search/ci_3634490
Last Updated: 03/29/2006 11:35 PM MST Voting machine deal smells (letter)
http://www.sltrib.com/search/ci_3653161
03/30/2006 10:59 AM MST New vote machines ignite feud in Emery Software flaw? County clerk threatens to resign over issue
http://www.sltrib.com/search/ci_3646075
03/30/2006 11:00 AM MST Emery County clerk takes back his resignation Now what? But the feud over election machines heats up, and commissioners say the clerk is out of a job
http://www.sltrib.com/search/ci_3649394
Last Updated: 03/31/2006 12:42 AM MST Short long on battle advice Voting machine fight: The controversial former S. L. County official says mediation is the answer
http://www.sltrib.com/search/ci_3658052
Last Updated: 04/07/2006 3:51 PM MDT Former Emery County clerk still fighting to keep job
http://www.sltrib.com/search/ci_3678385
http://www.geoffreylandis.com