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Diebold Flops in Alaska
lukej writes "From the Anchorage Daily News, During yesterday's preliminary and ballot measure election across Alaska, Diebold built voting machines failed to 'phone home' causing a hand recount. As a party spokesperson said:
"I can say there are many systematic problems with Diebold machines that have been identified in many contexts."
Additionally, the state itself has mandated some hand counts of all electronic results, and the Democratic Party is simply suggesting voters request paper voting."
how hard can it be? I could rig up a basic voting system in an afternoon and it would work "pretty good". A large company, on a multi-million-dollar contract, with years of work should be able to produce a flawless machine for something as simple as tallying some votes.
All I can say is, those secret election-rigging backdoors must take a lot of work, because what else have their developers been working on?
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
I see the Title "Electronic Toilet" and then the words "paper voting"...
Though in fairness, their ATMs have had just as many problems, but luckily ATMs dont completely undermine democracy. worm infections media player hack. Great idea to use windows XP (embedded) on an ATM...
Warhammer forums
Concern over the machines led the Alaska Legislature in 2005 to pass a law requiring a mandatory hand count of ballots in one randomly selected precinct in every election district.
Be interesting to hear about how those random hand counts compare to the machine tabulations.
By the way, it'd be nice if slashdotters took notice that a number of the failures were related to phone lines (probably people plugging them into the wrong jacks, digital lines, or lines requiring special dial-out numbers, etc.)
Last but not least:
The Diebold electronic voting machines nationwide have been criticized by voter groups and computer scientists who say they are vulnerable to fraud. Diebold has defended the machines, saying they are secure when elections officials follow proper procedures.
That's the whole point, Diebold: you shouldn't have to "follow proper procedures." The machines should make it impossible to do so, just like I punch a ballot, place it in a box, which is locked and sealed, and taken by police to the counting facility, etc. The current system requires a fair amount of work to interfere with; the Diebold machines seem to require a fair amount of work to NOT interfere with!
Please help metamoderate.
I am of the opinion that hand counts of paper ballot receipts (printed by the voting machine, verified by the voter, then dropped in a box at the site of the election) should always be done, regardless of whether it was a close race. Otherwise, Diebold could avoid a recount by fabricating a landslide. From the perspective of avoiding vote fraud, I can't think of a better method of running an election than forced recounts, though for convenience sake its nice to have a quick, initial electronic tally which can be verified later.
How can the system still be buggy? I mean, seariously? Haven't they had several years to complete it in now? A voting system seems to be such a simple application, even if you spiff it up with loads of extras, such as automatic reporting to a central database, security features etc etc. Have they had to invent the transistor and the binary computer all over? I know I'm a brilliant programmer (and sexy as hell too), but I would have thought that even lesser mortals would have big problems stretching the coding of a voting system out over several years, let alone leaving it full of bugs.
So how come they are able to stay in business? Is it the power of the free market?
I'm part of the Open Voting Consortium and we've been proposing a system in which the voter uses a machine to produce a paper ballot. That ballot *is* the ballot, not some copy, not some receipt, but the actual ballot. And it isn't good until stuffed into a ballot box.
The paper ballot is the core - it's in a form and font easy for machine readers to read, but it can also be read by people.
Now, that vote-printer machine can be any machine that has an interface appropriate to the needs of the voter - such as audio driven for sight impaired voters. (A ballot reader would be available to do an audio readback.)
Our proposal is to do this, plus a canvassing system (that's the part that aggregates the precinct counts into the grand totals.)
And we feel that *all* code, and all machinery, should be inspectable and testable by anybody who wants to run a test (and they should be able to publish their test results.) That's one step short of full open source - which doesn't mean that the code couldn't also be open source under one of the licenses.
It is a mistake to think of these things as a software issue - it involves machines (even if they look and smell like PC's, although I personally tend to prefer smaller/lower power engines like the WRAP or Soekris machines) and procedures, lots and lots of procedures (like what to do if a voter walks out in the middle of casting his/her vote - there are laws that say what to do, and they, of course, vary from state to state and even county to county.)
But it is harder to do than one thinks - the machines themselves can't just be any old junk PC. They need to be robust in the face of voter use and tampering behind the scenes. And they need to have lots and lots of places where they can be locked-down (often using things as simple as lead-and-wire tamper seals) to prevent hanky-panky by warehouse or precinct people.
They need to be power-conserving (imagine a precinct with a single circuit breaker/fuse and a flakey or non-existant ground, and that the voting is occuring during a thunderstorm.) UPS's are a pain - they have a high failure rate and given that they often contain a lead-acid battery, are neither lightweight nor quite innocent should they leak. And it's important to keep the fire marshall happy.
And printers are a pure pain in the rear - they can draw a lot of power and are generally the most failure prone part of the system.
And there are lots of legal requirements - like protecting the privacy of the vote. You can, for example, potentially reconstruct which voter voted which way by looking at things like sequencial files used for audit/error-detection or for ballot tallies.
And the stuff has to be easily configurable en masse - counties tend to need hundreds, thousands of these things, and they better all be the same. And they need to be able to be transported by folks who aren't necessarily gentle and set up by people who make your grandmother look like a tech support wizard.
We were planning on doing a project to produce a reference model for such a system via the University of California (multi-campus project with UC Santa Cruz in the project lead position) but we got cut out of California's HAVA (Federal voting act) funding when the previous California Sect'y of State got caught up in a brouhaha on other matters. It's still worth doing - every state would benefit.
Speaking as a Euroweenie, I just don't understand the apparent apathy in the USA with regards to the very serious issues surrounding vote counting machines. In a democracy, could anything be more important than making sure that votes are counted correctly and fairly, with a transparent process that can be verified?
Have you seen this, for instance?
http://alternet.org/blogs/video/40755/
That was a computer programmer testifying (two years ago) that he'd been asked to write vote rigging software for the Ohio elections. What was the outcome of that? Was there a formal non-partisan enquiry into the elections in Ohio? Was there a huge public protest there? What am I missing?
http://alternet.org/blogs/video/40755/
Summary --
Computer programmer Clinton Eugene Curtis testifies under oath before the U.S. House Judiciary Members in Ohio. Stephen Pizzo writes:
A partial transcript:
Are there computer programs that can be used to secretly fix elections?
Yes.
How do you know that to be the case?
Because in October of 2000, I wrote a prototype for Congressman Tom Feeney [R-FL]...
It would rig an election?
It would flip the vote, 51-49. Whoever you wanted it to go to and whichever race you wanted to win.
And would that program that you designed, be something that elections officials... could detect?
They'd never see it.
I am constantly in awe at the failure of implementating of IT within (the) public sector (services). Governments/states spend millions on the lowest bidder, with costs often spiralling to beyond that quoted by the highest bidder initially, and it increasingly seems as if you get what you pay for.
At least in this case lives were not at risksee here, here and here.
It could be argued that selection of companies such as Diebold comes from a lack of awareness of IT by governments, and is simply a cost/saving excercise, but even so- sensible questions should be raised about all contractors- have they got a track record, how are they trialling the product, are their guarantees more than verbal...do we have a backup?
Sure DIebold cannot make excuses...but can the government either?
Actually, he's the longest serving senator in the majority party. Robert Byrd is the longest serving senator. Sen. Byrd will become president pro tempore (assuming he is re-elected this fall) if the Democrats ever control the Senate.
Furthermore, for Ted Stevens to become president, Bush, Cheney, and Denny Hastert would all have to die or otherwise be unable to assume the presidency. Come to think of it, he is only two heartbeats away as Cheney doesn't really have a heart, but a sort of robotic device that keeps his oil^H^H^H blood flowing.
Our politicians are more interested in winning than preserving democracy.
Hence these voting machines.
In US money is more valuable than freedom/democracy. Hence why would we require a very high reliability from ATM, but none from the voting machine?
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
The sum of this problem is taking a number, and incrementing it. You must add a pretty, easy to understand interface, and then add a paper trail system.
Here's what I want:
- I walk into a voting center.
- I am asked for ID.
- I present my state Drivers License or Federal Passport for visual inspection.
- In return I'm provided with a re-usable line-tracker token (deli waiting line slip).
- I wait in line to vote.
- I enter the voting booth, surrendering my deli slip to a large box.
- I vote.
- The machine produces three bits of paper; my reciept, my official ballot, and my exit poll token.
- I retain the reciept for my own personal records. It contains no bare words, simply a tracking number, date and time, and location.
- My Official Ballot is dropped into a lockbox of a million similar others, to be stored for eventual hand-recount. It never enters my or anyone elses hands.
- My exit poll token may be presented to exit pollsters, or I may destroy it.
- I enjoy some milk and cookies, and leave.
- Much later, at home, I am able to look up my ballot based on the ID number on my reciept. From this, I can tell where my ballot is, in what box, in what warehouse, what machine I used, what voting center, and the date and time. It may also show what machine was used to process my vote in a recount, or if a hand recount had been done.
- I am able to sleep at night, knowing that democracy will take effect.
This is really not that difficult. Not as difficult as Diebold has made it, and surely not as cloak-and-dagger.Informatus Technologicus