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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...
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!
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)
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.
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!
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...
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?
Or perhaps you should go back to pecnil, paper and a sealed box, like we still use over here in the UK. I trust that system much more that I'd ever trust a voting machine.
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
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.
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.
"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
"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.
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....
"I don't blame Diebold for not wanting some 3rd party yahoo breaking seals on their machines."
Well, I understand what you're saying. But they're not Diebold's machines any more than this PC is not Microsoft's PC. That's an important distinction.
"But they can't point to a documented, legitimate qualification process to allay their customer's valid concerns."
Exactly right. Moreover, they have no *re-certification* process. Think about what will happen to these machines. The election is over. They are taken to the county warehouse. You pull them out 1 year later. How do I certify they haven't been tampered with? Some seal on the door??????? Or do you have to pay a special technician to come out for 3-4 weeks per machine to cerify each machine?
"This is lousy engineering of the kind that pervades traditional IT"
Perhaps. But Diebold seems to figure out how to do it right when banks insist they do it right, but here they chose not to do it that way. Curious? Sure seems it.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
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?
--
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
Or perhaps you should go back to pecnil, paper and a sealed box, like we still use over here in the UK. I trust that system much more that I'd ever trust a voting machine.
The difference is that in the US we vote on many more offices. My ballot generally includes some forty or fifty choices. It's easy enough to mark such a ballot with a pencil, but it gets difficult to count them, so some automation is useful. Further, a well-designed touch screen user interface is accessible to people with vision and motor skill deficiencies that would exclude them from voting with a paper ballot. Finally, a well-designed touch screen UI is less error-prone.
So, there are good reasons to use machines, but there aren even better reasons *not* to use purely electronic tallies as the final results.
Voting machines should print human-readable paper ballots, verifiable by the voter, that can also be counted by machine, and those ballots should be put in a locked metal box and then counted under supervision of all the major political parties to produce the official tallies.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
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.
--
make install -not war
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
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.
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.
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-
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.
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.
o you've never heard of having a different voting slip for each actual office position then... and putting the marked slips in the correct boxes makes things easier at the counting places as well
We'd need at least 30 boxes. That's just impractical. Come to that, it's better to put everything on one paper ballot and then figure out how to count (which is what has been done for many, many years).
You have to remember how governments are structured in the US. City, County, State and Federal governments are all separate, and we vote for offices for each. Within each government, executive, legislative and judicial branches are separate, and we vote for people in most of them. On top of that are ballot initiatives at the city, county and state level.
Whether or not having so many choices actually improves democracy is an open question, but this is the system we have, and the voting approach must work with it.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
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.
The $40k is for the booze and the hookers. The techs will have to gamble with their own money, though.
The latest Slashdot meme.
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.
No, we're not missing that at all. It seems evident that the Chain of Command was either dazzled, baffled, or bribed into accepting these faulty machines from an ethically deficient corporation, and the only way the integrity of the voting process could be preserved was to solicit an independent examination into the machines' trustworthiness.
That the Chain of Command is now throwing a hissy fit about "warranty violations" serves only to illustrate that they are paying attention to the wrong things. Of course you independently test the machines. When you're dealing with something this important, you never believe the four-color glossies; you acquire your own facts and test stuff.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
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.
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
All jests aside, I think its going to take someone hacking the machine to display some incredible result for people to get excited about this issue. I'm thinking someone needs to hack machines in a small, safe D or R state -- perhaps Wyoming or DC. Just imagine if John McCain won DC or Hilary Clinton won Wyoming ... both with over 90% of the vote. That'd raise some eyebrows and, more importantly, not affect the end result of the election, assuming 3 EVs wouldn't change the balance.
Any takers?
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.