The Diebold Voting-Machine Hack

Warm John writes to mention a short article on Doctor Dobbs Journal about the Hack that couldn't be done. "Hacking a Diebold voting machine was the focus of Cigital's Gary McGraw's keynote at SD Best Practices. He discussed 'Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine,' a paper released by Edward Felten, Ari Feldman, and Alex Halderman of the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy. 'The paper details a simple method whereby the Princeton team was able to compromise the physical security of a Diebold voting machine, infecting it with a virus that could change voting results and spread by memory-card to other machines of the same type.'"

Comments

firmware flash

[thedrunkensailor]

if i flash it can i use it as a calculator too?

Re:firmware flash

[__aaclcg7560]

You don't want to do any flashing around these machines. The little old ladies behind the voting table will be watching you like a hawk and they're swoop down on you so fast with their canes before you could even think about flashing anyone. If you want a safe voting experience, you must see no evil, hear no evil or speak no evil when the voting machine flashes you!

Re:firmware flash

[An Onerous Coward]

I wouldn't suggest it. With a Diebold calculator, you give it the problem, and also the solution you want it to give you when it's done calculating.

meme seems appropriate

[xanie]

I'm in your voting machine stealing your election.

Money more important than a fair vote?

[ronkronk]

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.

Re:Money more important than a fair vote?

[partisanX]

Nobody in their right mind who cares about the stability of our democratic republic could condone a continuation of these scandals. If we can't trust the vote, then we can't trust anything about the government, and when enough people feel that way in a democratic republic, bad things happen.

Re:Money more important than a fair vote?

[Mikkeles]

Avi Ruben also has an interesting blog article on his experiences as a poll worker in the recent Maryland election.

Re:Money more important than a fair vote?

[fade-in]

The other funny thing about money and Diebolds in Utah is that because they are so expensive, some precincts have fewer voting machines than ever before.
http://www.kcpw.org/article/1719/

Re:Money more important than a fair vote?

[Maxo-Texas]

I keep saying this but a lot of fools seem to think they really have a chance of changing things.

One of my votes since 1998 has mattered. ONE.

Even then, I was #31.

My district is so gerrymandered.
If I was a republican- my vote doesn't matter.
If I was a democrat- my vote doesn't matter.

And then on top of that- I only get to vote for candidates that were pre-selected for me by the party (aka corporations, lawyers, and politicians (who are beholden to the corporations) ).

Why vote when it is going to be 70/30 for a candidate already owned by corporations.

It is crazy. At least we still have relative freedom in obscurity about the other issues you mention. it may be illegal but apparently 4.7 % of boomers are doing pot these days.

Re:Money more important than a fair vote?

[dgatwood]

Nobody in their right mind who understands what's going on can condone the existence of closed-source software in the vote counting or vote taking process at all, whether by Diebold or otherwise.

If elections officials told the public, "We're going to count by a secret counting method and we won't tell you how we're going to count; you'll just have to trust us that we picked the right person for the job," the public would burn down city hall. Unfortunately, the public hasn't yet realized that this is exactly what is happening....

Anybody want to raise money for a front page ad in the NY Times? Maybe with a little extra money left over to donate to local fire departments? :-)

Re:Money more important than a fair vote?

[partisanX]

Golly, do you people lack reading comprehension or just critical thinking skills?

Funny, I didn't get the feeling the poster mentioned closed source so much to advocate open source software, as to draw the clear paralell between that and a secret ballot counting method implementation. Let me re-read... Yep, he didn't mention using Open Source at all, he mentioned closed source and then followed it with the very valid, extremely painfully obvious paralell between that and a secret ballot counting procedure.

Do you see that now or is there a problem with YOUR reading comprehension or critical thinking skills?

Re:Money more important than a fair vote?

[XorNand]

Actually, *all* corporations pay taxes. Some may not income taxes, but they certainly pay other taxes (or their members do). In fact, corporate taxes account for around 7% of the US's GDP. While that's somewhat concerning because as late as the 1960's, corporate taxation accounted for 25% of the GPD, it certainly isn't "no taxes".

Also keep in mind that the vast majority of corporations are small businesses (can't find a citation ATM). That's important because small businesses employ 52% of the workers in the US and create 65% of the net new jobs. But even if you qualify your hating to "big corporations" (however you define that line), it doesn't really advance the argument. The computer you're now using wouldn't exist without corporations. Neither would many of the other benefits modern society offers that are taken advantage of daily by the same people who criticize capitalism.

I'm not saying much of corporate America doesn't suck. I'm a former refugee myself, who's since left to run his own company. But the mindless corporate bashing that is a regular mantra here at Slashdot is just plain mental laziness.

Sources:
http://www.cbpp.org/10-16-03tax.htm
http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/oecon/chap4. htm
http://www.fedex.com/us/about/news/speeches/greate raccess.html

Re:Money more important than a fair vote?

[daspriest]

Hardened boxes, tamper proof without proper tools and procedures, along with 2 person integrity with the machines from vault(with two person integrity locks), to polling place(with machine integrity testing occuring on each machine by a not for profir third party), to counting facility, back to the vault with signature transfers all the way from start to finish. Seems like it would be worth the trouble to ensure that the voting results are properly recorded and reported.

I think it sad and scary that the results of the Television awards shows have tighter security then any of the process of the democratic elections.

Re:Money more important than a fair vote?

[nexarias]

If elections officials told the public, "We're going to count by a secret counting method and we won't tell you how we're going to count; you'll just have to trust us that we picked the right person for the job," the public would burn down city hall. Unfortunately, the public hasn't yet realized that this is exactly what is happening....

Nothing suggests to me that the American public are that concerned to do anything. It barely flinched with the NASA wiretapping incident, and more recently the passing of the bill to expand those powers.

Re:Money more important than a fair vote?

[symbolic]

However, Demma seems more incensed at Funk because he may cost the state $40,000 for Diebold's astronomical recertification fee.

Huh? Diebold is certifying its own machines? To say that this is like the fox guarding the henhouse would be a gross oversimplification...it's more like the fox has control of a large percentage of the henhouses throughout the country, and is working diligently to ensure this does not change.

Re:Money more important than a fair vote?

[megaditto]

If elections officials told the public, "We're going to count by a secret counting method and we won't tell you how we're going to count; you'll just have to trust us that we picked the right person for the job," the public would burn down city hall.

If elections officials told the public, "To protect your Freedom we are going to count by an undisclosed counting method and we won't help terrorists by telling the evildoers how we're going to protect the public and count the votes; you'll just have to support our troops and the person we picked for the job," the public would greet you as liberators

There, corrected it for ya.

Re:Money more important than a fair vote?

[LordLucless]

I'm from Australia; we do. In fact, I'm one of the polling officials who does the counting. However, with our recent elections, there have been heaps of candidates and the ballot papers have been huge (like say 2xA3 sheets joined together). There are also a tonne of informal ballots, both deliberate ones, and ones where people just haven't understood the voting procedure, and have failed to make their preference clear. Computer voting could reduce this. Because the generated ticket wouldn't have to have all the options, just the candidate(s) that were voted for, that would shrink the currently-cumbersome ballot paper considerably. Because the computer screen could offer online help, and would not accept informal votes, that problem would be reduced too. A computer system is pretty flexible as well, and you could offer multiple interfaces (text-to-speech, for example) for those with disabilities, and present ballot papers and instructions in multiple languages. There are a lot of reasons to use a good computer system for voting, with the emphasis on the "good".

Re:Money more important than a fair vote?

[complete loony]

Just a little more perspective on the Australian system.

We vote for the lower house and the PM by voting for one person (with a preference based system, where you number each box 1 - n) in fairly small districts. As with the US this devolves into a 2 party system, though some independant candidates are elected from time to time, and can sometimes hold the balance of power.

The upper house is voted at the state level, again by a preference system. And while this is dominated by the 2 main parties, it operates more like a popular vote. If your party gets a sufficient percentage of the total vote, you get a seat in the senate. Every man and his dog seems to register a party for the senate since they have a better chance of getting in. This makes the actual voting difficult as you would have to enter a number into all 50 odd boxes. So there's a box on the top of the form where you can specify to vote using the parties preferences.

Unfortunately, at the moment a single party has the majority of seats in both the lower and upper house. This has allowed the PM to pass all sorts of crazy laws ;).

If this can't finally nail the coffin lid shut

[fudgefactor7]

Then I don't know what can. We need more information like this to come out because when dealing with elections, the last thing we need--but apparently the opposition wants--is for some kind of shennanigans elecing the wrong person. If electronic voting is ever to be used, it darn well should be open source, and transparent as hell...with two paper receipts (one for the voter and one for the auditors.)

Re:If this can't finally nail the coffin lid shut

[fishbowl]

"Then I don't know what can. We need more information like this to come out because when dealing with elections, the last thing we need--but apparently the opposition wants--is for some kind of shennanigans elecing the wrong person."

I don't know why so many people act like it's unthinkable to discard a flawed election and start over with a new one. In the case of a presidential election, the term expires, the Speaker of the House takes over, and stays in charge until a president and vice president is elected. Alternatively, if the election in a state is flawed, then the legislature of that state still has authority to choose its electors by any means they can agree on, provided they are not further constrained by state laws.

This is far from unthinkable, it's actually spelled out in the Constitution.

Re:If this can't finally nail the coffin lid shut

[Dr. Groovysticks]

"with two paper receipts (one for the voter and one for the auditors.)" I disagree- the voter should be able to see the printed receipt confirming his vote, but shouldn't have a receipt to take home. What's to stop his boss from telling him to vote a certain way and bring in your receipt to prove it? Or selling your vote and using the receipt as proof? Disallowing voters receipts helps protect the voter.

Re:If this can't finally nail the coffin lid shut

[Don'tTreadOnMe]

...the last thing we need--but apparently the opposition wants...

Clarification please: Who are we? And who is the opposition

Just wondering...

Soo..

[eieken]

How much more media attention do we need to give these jackasses at Diebold before the person in charge of contracting them goes.. "Hey wait a minute, you guys aren't very good at this ludicrously simple task," and takes a different approach to voting machines that doesn't give ultimate authority to some "company" over whether or not our votes will count.

Re:Soo..

[fishbowl]

You are assuming that the person in charge of contracting Diebold for voting machines actually *wants* tamperproof, accountable systems.

Re:Soo..

[OWJones]

Thank you for stealing an earlier post of mine absolutely verbatim.

-the real jdm

Scary

[sm62704]

In Illinois we get a paper printout that you check for accuracy and put in a ballot box; we can actually have a real recount.

That's incredibly weird, considering this IS Illinois, where they say "vote early, vote often," where dead people still have a right to vote, and the last two governors who lost elections went to prison (or will, in the case of Ryan).

Re:Scary

[penix1]

That's what they mean when the pundents screech "paper trail!". The "paper trail" isn't for the voter to take home but to verify before depositing it in a ballot box. The problem is the voting machines that are produced by and large don't print anything. The votes are recorded inside and transfered to a larger repository for counting. If the count is off, there is no way to recount other than the faulty data in the machine already.

When you consider the ease of simply printing a receipt like slip of paper one has to wonder why they refuse to make them all do it. There is more accountability when you go to the supermarket than when you go vote.

B.

America Has A Rootkit

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

And no, SpybotSD can't help you.

The first person to do this is going to be stupid

[CrazyJim1]

I bet either someone is going to have 100% votes for Fred Flintstone, or someone is going to have a 60% write in for some person. Both of which could never happen and would do nothing except expose the voting machines as tamperable. I doubt someone is going to be smart enough to make the election look close, but vote for someone on the ballot. The only way a good ol conspiracy vote could happen is if the hacker got a load of money from a candidate. Well I guess that could happen.

More Secure Lock

[TheFlyingGoat]

This entire thing comes down to the ability to pick a lock so someone can replace the flash card. So why not put more secure locks on the devices? The paper ballots that we all love are also stored in locking containers, and as such are subject to the same fate as the Diebold tablets.

There are certain locks that are extremely difficult to pick... that's the solution.

Re:The box was not production hardware...

[ronkronk]

I've seen plenty of pro-Microsoft and pro-Diebold posts get modded up. All you have to do is have a clear point, and show it. You didn't manage that. You said the fraud happens, and it doesn't make a difference if we can trace it or not.

It does make a difference. With a punch card, or a paper ballot, or even a mechanical voting both anyone can trace when fraud has occured. And in those cases we implement some security, track where the fraud came from (if we can) and redo the election.

With the current generation of electronic voting machines, we can't do that. I don't care who makes a good machine, but Diebold hasn't made one. And they've defended that design as if they think it is a good machine. Geeks don't like people who pretend a bad design is a good design. We'll tear into them. If they routinely defend bad design by saying it is good design and overlooking what we think are obvious flaws we'll notice, and start to expect that. Until they change, a group that decides who they like on the technical ability of a company won't like them. They are lying about their technical quality; at least in our eyes.

Unfortunately, "so what?" may be the response

[Captain Sarcastic]

I found the FAQ interesting. I liked the way they set the tenor of the questions, and included such things as "you weren't supposed to say anything about this!" The research seems pretty clear-cut, and the precautions that the researchers took appears to have been well thought out.

I hope that I underestimate the American people on this (including me), because the next tack that will be taken by Diebold will be, "Well, who in their right mind would want to tamper with an election? Calm down, citizens, this is just scaremongering by the right/left/pedestrians..." Once this is followed up with a suggestion that such might be "fomenting a panic designed to cause a breach of the peace," vague threats of arrest for those involved, and nothing changing.

Well, if nothing else, this voter's going to try his hand at absentee balloting this time around. Just in case...

Re:The box was not production hardware...

[rodgster]

Maybe this is an example of free market forces at work.

One customer wants a secure, hardened, auditable, time proven machine with a user verifiable paper trail.

The other doesn't need any of those features.

Therefore two entirely disparate product lines.

One is designed to protect $.

The other is designed to protect democracy.

as we all know

[User 956]

The paper details a simple method whereby the Princeton team was able to compromise the physical security of a Diebold voting machine, infecting it with a virus that could change voting results and spread by memory-card to other machines of the same type.

It's not who votes that counts, it's who counts the votes.

Re:The box was not production hardware...

[Frymaster]

Geeks don't like people who pretend a bad design is a good design. We'll tear into them

it's called 'peer review' and in the science world it's not only expected but mandatory.

my question is this: has diebold's product undergone any sort of peer review? if it's important enough for someone studying the genetic inheretance of grey hair, it's important enough for someone entrusted with running an election for the most powerful person in the world, dontcha think?

Re:Could be modded as flamebait...

[nezroy]

http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/

Re:The box was not production hardware...

[Marxist Hacker 42]

It seems to me that write once media could be a partial solution here- a multisession CDR running packet write software, can be analyzed just like paper- but compresses the information.

Who would want to tamper? Terrorists

[FerretFrottage]

Sure hackers would be tempted as well, but look at it from a major terrorist network perspective. If they were able to alter the election outcome and prove it (or have it proven), think about the doubt this would cast in all future elections (and possibliy cast doubt on past ones as well if the same tech was used)...and not just for Americans, but world wide. "One man, one vote"....I could see the terrorists laughing as they played video of them voting of a candidate 1 million times or taking down the voting "network" entirely. They wouldn't even need to injure/kill anybody in the process and they would be able to make a major statement.

Re:Who would want to tamper? Terrorists

[Chris Burke]

The Possible Future, Nov 4th, 2008
"While exit polls conducted by our station and others showed Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. John McCain neck-in-neck at nearly 50% in this highly contested state of Ohio, initial results from available precincts shows the winner of the state, and thus the country, as Osama bin Laden, with 107% of the vote. A tape allegedly featuring Mr. bin Laden was broadcast by the al Jazeera network just minutes ago, in which the terrorist mastermind said he was pleased by the clear mandate the capitalist pig masses had given him, and that he hoped his transition from a cave somewhere in Pakistan to the Oval Office would go smoothly. Back to you, Tom."

I don't know, think that would wake people up?

Re:Who would want to tamper? Terrorists

[Mjlner]

Quite funny, but Bin Laden would never speak of "the capitalist pig masses" of the US. He hates communism as much as the most hardline republican in the US, if not more. He is a religious fanatic, while communism is usually coupled with the idea of a secular state. And, oh yeah, he actually fought the Soviet Union.

Uh...

[raehl]

and the last two governors who lost elections went to prison (or will, in the case of Ryan).

Ryan didn't lose an election - he won, all the way up until he (plagued with scandal) didn't run again.

Re:The first person to do this is going to be stup

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I'll get mod-bombed right back down to Good Karma for this- but I have to say that I'm not at all sure it didn't happen in Ohio and Florida in 2004. The exit poll numbers, which had previously been extremely accurate in just about every election I'd ever heard of, were way off in those two states on the Presidential race- but the numbers were close enough that everybody focused on recounts instead (where possible).

We've heard it before but...

[Sgt_Jake]

How come no one seems to be asking the slot machine manufacturers to make voting machines? They deal with millions - or billions - of dollars a day and seem to be able to account for every single penny accurately. As an added bonus, all they'd really have to do is change the 7's to donkeys and jackpots to republicans... Pull the lever for your new rep! Seriously though - they're the people who should be making the machines...

Re:We've heard it before but...

[3waygeek]

Diebold is well known for banking systems, including ATMs, so they know a thing or two about accountability. For some reason, these lessons haven't been transferred to their elections division.

Re:We've heard it before but...

[Kesch]

Hmm... I seem to have voted for Cherry, Cherry, Lemon

Re:We've heard it before but...

[hmccabe]

A vote for Cherry is a vote for Plum. Thanks for throwing away your vote, asshole.

The video is excellent

[bsandersen]

I have just finished watching the video on the Princeton site and I must say it is very well done. Any reasonably motivated alert person who watches this video will see the problem we're trying to highlight.

It isn't enough for computer software professionals to discover problems like this; we need to be able to communicate our results effectively to the non-technical public. Too often we find something disturbing and decend into technical jargon and lose our audience. The Princeton team has done an excellent job avoiding that pitfall and communicating this threat.

Now, if only we could find a reasonably motivated and alert politician to actually act on this.

Re:The box was not production hardware...

[Phillup]

my question is this: has diebold's product undergone any sort of peer review?

Unfortunately, yes. Many crooks and liars have deemed the system to be "just fine".

FINALLY!

[susano_otter]

Finally, a Conspiracy Theory that is actually possible, from a technological standpoint.

Now all we have to do is prove that it actually happened.

What about the seals?

[thedohman]

All the little openings on those things have seals placed over them, so it becomes quite obvious that the box has been tampered with because the seal is broken. True, some county clerk (or Diebold employee maybe) could probably get a replacement to replace it, but it would be hard to cover the evidence. Now i'm not saying that everythings hunky dory just becuase we know if it's been tampered with. Obviously, if a machine is tampered with, you can't trust the votes. Which means they can't (shouldn't) be counted. Which means that some poeple's votes are getting counted when maybe there was no vote changing after all, but you can't tell and the whole process breaks down, because by not counting any of the machines in a certain area of [town|county|state] the vote is, in effect, altered. Similar to what would happen if someone snuck a few hundred forged ballots into the ballot box.... the count wouldn't be right when compared to the rolls, and they couldn't trust the entire precinct's ballots. So why don't they just modify the software so it doesn't 'read' anything from the card, (and yes modify the boot process if need be)... except maybe space left on it. so it can't pick up a virus in the first place. Bah! i never actually post on /. what am i thinking? I'm just a lurker, grrr

Re:The box was not production hardware...

[Mikkeles]

'There is no independent verification that the software contained in it is the same as the production Diebold machines used in the vote tallies.

From the referenced paper:

The machine we obtained came loaded with version 4.3.15 of the Diebold BallotStation software that
runs the machine during an election. This version was deployed in 2002 and certified by the National
Association of State Election Directors (NASED) [11].

Re:The box was not production hardware...

[dgatwood]

It does make a difference. With a punch card, or a paper ballot, or even a mechanical voting both anyone can trace when fraud has occured. And in those cases we implement some security, track where the fraud came from (if we can) and redo the election.

Except that they won't. There have been numerous cases recently in which problems were confirmed beyond any doubt. In every case, even when the number of dubious votes would have been enough to potentially change the results of the election, the courts let the election results stand, and no reelections were called.

We don't need to be able to prove that fraud occurred. We need to be able to eradicate it. The only way that is even remotely possible is if the voting process is transparent. This means:

• Every piece of software installed on the voting machines from the driver layer all the way up to the GUI must be open source and subject to public inspection.
• Any changes to the code must be subjected to a thorough audit before they can be deployed.
• Every single security bug reported that can be reproduced MUST be fixed prior to the date of deployment.
• Every single security bug must be public knowledge.
• The hardware must be commodity hardware underneath so that average citizens can test the software on their own systems.
• The hardware must have additional physical security measures built into the case design.
• The hardware must be under lock and key in a secure storage container from the moment that it has been certified up until the day of the election.
• The usual security measures from there forward should probably be sufficient.

My experience with Diebold

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to democratic government, brought to you by Diebold(R)!

Please choose a candidate:
(1) The incumbent guy who's against the terrorists.
(2) The weasly other guy who likes terrorists and wants your child to
        be gay.

[press 2]

You have chosen option (2), for gay marriage. Are you sure?

[press no]

Please choose a candidate.

[press 2]

Let's not be too hasty. We don't want the terrorists to feel good.
Do you want the terrorists to feel good?

[press no]

You have chosen option (1), for the incumbent. Are you sure?

[press cancel]

This may forfeit your vote! Are you sure you wish to cancel not
voting for option (1)?

[press yes]

Thank you for your participation in the democratic process! Printing
receipt ...

Sorry! Out of paper.

Now that we know it is virus-susceptable...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

This entire thing comes down to the ability to pick a lock so someone can replace the flash card.

Now that we know the machine itself is virus-susceptable, the next steps are:
  1) See if the smartcard reader code has a vulnerability. (Any bets on a buffer overflow bug?)
  2) If so, design a virus that can do the initial infection via the smartcard slot.

Succeed at 2) and you can carry a bogus smartcard in, insert it while you "vote", and infect a voting machine. Since the machines are apparently capable of passing the infection during the post-election vote collection process, you can take over the precinct (either all the remaining machines or the one doing the totals) by infecting one voting machine.

Design the virus to self-destruct after doing its dirty work and you don't even leave tracks.

With all due respect...

[partisanX]

... paper and pen are cheaper, simpler, and time tested and proven. Plus, a substantial segment of our society still views computer systems with distrust. The goal should be that NO Americans feel there is something shady in the voting process, not just those who are tech savvy enough to understand the issues.

I say this realizing that there will always be people with suspicions, so we have to aim to make that the lowest number possible, which IMO, rules out computerized voting at this time.

Re:With all due respect...

[Dr_Barnowl]

Absolutely.

What is the obsession with machine voting anyway? The only advantage seems to be counting speed. Since by the time all the ballots are in, counting speed makes ZERO difference to the outcome of a fair election, it's an irrelevancy - what's a few more hours against an elected term that will go on for years?

The absolute requirement for me is that your voting system be comprehensible and auditable by the common man. Because it concerns us all. The system with the widest comprehensibility is pencil and paper.

While pencil and paper isn't flawless, the key difference is that it's a system that a lot of people understand. Irregularities are far easier to recognise by the common man. With a machine system, only someone who understands the machine can spot the system being subverted.

Print ballots. With boxes on. You make a mark in the box, you voted for that person. No chads, no hanging. And anyone who can count can see that the right thing is done.

Sure, introduce machine systems to help make it harder to subvert the voter system. But the basic counting mechanism should be a wet thumb and a box of rubber bands.

Re:With all due respect...

[MightyYar]

But paper systems do have problems. Things like smudges, stray marks, poorly marked ballots, lost ballots, etc. Plus, many hands on the ballots for all of these recounts doesn't help at all as far as adding smudges, introducing fraud, etc. Machines can increase the accuracy of the count, reducing the margin of error. Typically this doesn't really matter much, but every once in a while you have a national election decided by a couple hundred votes somewhere :) I think a nice compromise is a computer print-out from an electronic machine. That way, you get a nice user-verified hard copy that is legible and not open to interpretation. Printer jams and hardware failures will occur, of course, so that needs to be accounted for. You could always use redundant printers, I suppose. But even then, if a machine malfunctions, allow the last person to file a provisional ballot and shut the machine down - you don't have to lose all of the votes!

Army of One

[Doc Ruby]

Ed Felten is also the guy who hacked the MS DLL that "integrated" IE into Windows to remove IE without destroying the OS, proving in court that Microsoft's defense of their illegal bundling, "it was technologically necessary", was a lie. Though Felten was not even a Windows specialist, and certainly didn't have the source code to delete IE cleanly, he was the the key to the court finding that MS had violated their antibundling consent agreement, the key to finding they'd violated their monopoly status.

Now he's the guy proving Diebold voting systems are insecure.

Isn't anyone else in our giant, brilliant "computer science" industry doing anything? Or are they all working for the bad guys?

Re:Army of One

[Xyrus]

The problem with evil is there is just too much damn money to be made.

~X~

They have had their problems with ATMs too

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>Diebold is well known for banking systems, including ATMs

Diebold ATM turned into jukebox

Diebold ATM infected with Welchia

Diebold just needs an incentive ....

[RallyDriver]

Compromising Diebold machines seems to be a regular method of swinging elections in Florida ( UC Berkeley )

The white hat community needs to start undermining vulnerable e-voting technologies whenever and wherever possible. Just put a few Democrats into office in the bible belt.

The CEO of Diebold is on record as a dyed in the wool Republican: "Our job is to deliver the election to George W Bush". Problematic for a vendor with so much trust. But once their machines start swinging votes for the other side, they'll soon start adding security.

Re:The first person to do this is going to be stup

[MyLongNickName]

Ahhh yes, the conspiracy theory. You don't offer any counter example. You don't counter the points made in the article. You just yell 'bullshit'. Great argument.

I, for one, have a better explanation. People are dumb. That's the way Bush got elected last time. I will be honest enough to say I voted for Bush in 2000. But I am, at least, smart enough to admit my mistakes. People got their little payouts in the mail. Bush shored up his base. The folks ignored the two trillion of debt he has piled on us, and the quagmires he lied his way into.

No... I do not buy into the conspiracy theory. You don't need to rig elections except through breasd and circuses.

hack?

[sckeener]

How can one hack a diebold voting machine when they are open?

Shouldn't these just be considered mods?

Do I have this right?

[vtcodger]

***The Diebold machine used for this article came via private hands. There is no independent verification that the software contained in it is the same as the production Diebold machines used in the vote tallies.***

So, you're suggesting that the Princeton Center for whatever might have gotten ahold of a machine that someone had already hacked? Yeah, maybe so. Somehow, that doesn't make me feel better about these things.

Oh ... you're suggesting that the flaws identified by the Princeton team may already have been fixed. Possible I suppose, but unless the machine was stolen originally from a back room in the Diebold factory, doesn't that imply that Diebold has, in the past, shipped vulnerable machines? Should that make me feel more secure? Have they been seeking the old vulnerable models out and fixing them?

This may be a case like aircraft safety where really strict, impartial, government monitoring is required to ensure that private industry doesn't screw up. Or we could just go back to paper ballots which are cheap, easy to understand, and auditable.

Ohio election must've been rigged - video evidence

[nephridium]

This is a congressional hearing of Clinton Curtis in which he explains how easy it is to write software to rig elections, and in fact has been asked to do so by member of the House Tom Feeney (R). Curtis testifies under oath. Feeney says afterwards he does not 'remember' meeting Curtis.

The media has not been reporting on this; though this apparently happened in December 2004 today is actually the first time I saw this hearing by just browsing through youtube.

Actually, open source doesn't matter here

[arete]

I'm an OSS fan, but "voter verified" recountability matters, OSS does not.

There is no way for you to independently verify that the VERSION of the OSS software on a machine is actually what you think it is.

You MUST have a system where the voter can verify what their machine thinks their vote is (eg a slip of paper) in such a way that you can reliably recount it by hand (and by multiple people, of course) However, once you HAVE a recountable system suddenly it doesn't really matter how trustworthy the machines are; if anyone suspects anything or it's close you trigger a hand-recount.