Slashdot Mirror
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...
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!
I guess I forgot to run them through Babelfish a few times?
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.
No, what I'm saying is that I left the machine with a voting official who has some sort of administrative access to the machine. That administrator gave a third party company with no official material on the inner workings of the machine that administrator access to run some unknown tests on the machine and now they're claiming the machine may be broken dur to a memory error. I'd certainly be suspicious of what that 3rd party did to the machine. However, unlike Diebold, I would probably approach that third party directly to ask them what tests they've run and even provide them with an environment where they could reproduce their testing procedure before I went crying to the press about it.
"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.
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.
In my opinion, at least as important is the belief that the proper group to see if the machines are compromised is the manufacturer.
If the machines can't be verified as uncompromised on voting day by an election staffer at a voting location multiple times throughout the day, that's a huge problem. For the voting commission to accept Diebold's line that "That's the way it is." is simply unconscionable.
Slot machines in Nevada can be checked against any number of parameters to make sure that 1) hardware has not been added or replaced, 2) the software has not been altered (from the registered version on file with the NGC) and 3) the settings for the software match the casino's payout statements. The casino can do these checks, the NGC can do these checks, interested public parties can do these checks (with the cooperation of either the casino or the NGC).
Shouldn't we expect at least as much from the recordkeepers of democracy as we expect from a gambling house?
Regards,
Ross