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Brave New Ballot
Ben Rothke writes "In an important new book Brave New Ballot: The Battle to Safeguard Democracy in the Age of Electronic Voting, Avi Rubin writes 'too often in American life, when it comes to divisive issues, the facts can be less important than the weight of public opinion'. That basically sums up Rubin's story in this fascinating story of his frustrations in dealing with government and corporate officials in his quest to show that e-voting was not as secure as it was originally made out to be." Read the rest of Ben's review.
Brave New Ballot: The Battle to Safeguard Democracy in the Age of Electronic Voting
author
Aviel Rubin
pages
272
publisher
Morgan Road Books
rating
10
reviewer
Ben Rothke
ISBN
0767922107
summary
Electronic voting systems are being deployed with inadequate levels of trust and security
Brave New Ballot (BNB) is Rubin's story of how in 2003, he and his graduate students at Johns Hopkins University demonstrated that the Diebold Election Systems electronic voting technology in wide use was full of security problems. It was just in 2002 that Sherron Watkins of Enron was named Time magazine person of the year for her work in uncovering fraud at Enron. It would have been thought that Rubin's work would have immediately won him some sort of patriot of the year award for his work.
While the accolades were indeed many, his team's research was maligned as being that of a homework assignment, and the Administrator for Elections for the state of Maryland (where Rubin lives and works) publicly stated that 'computer scientists (a direct reference to Rubin and his team) who question the security of electronic voting machines are undermining our democracy.' Such a scenario makes up much of the story that the book tells in Rubin's team's efforts to blow the whistle on unsecure e-voting machines.
As to the Administrator for Elections for the state of Maryland and her disdain for computer scientists, she would likely find constituents such as the zombie-like Stepford wives more to her liking. Unfortunately, she ended up with Professor Rubin.
It is not that secure electronic voting is inherently unattainable. Rather, nearly all of the commercial solutions that have shipped to date have not been adequate designed with security in mind. This is due to many factors, some of which are that the makers of these devices do not completely understand the security risks and countermeasures, in addition to public officials who are far too trusting of these commercial e-voting vendors.
The early chapters of the book detail how Rubin's team analyzed the security and cryptography used within extremely sloppy coding of the Diebold Accuvote-TS director recording electronic device. One particularly humorous incident is when the Diebold programmers reference Bruce Schneier's Applied Cryptography in their C++ code for their decision of which algorithm to use of a for pseudorandom number generation. The only problem is that Applied Cryptography states that the specific algorithm they used should specifically not be utilized for random number generation. Rubin comically states about that incident that Diebold should have consulted with Schneier, rather than have their staff misunderstand what they read in his book.
I had a similar frustrating incident when consulting on an e-voting systems some years ago. The lead developer (who obviously was no expert in cryptography) documented that the e-voting system used 120-bit encryption. Upon analysis, we found that the system was using 40-bit encryption. When countered about that, the developer replied that they perform the 40-bit encryption routine three times using the same key, for an effective 120-bit key length. Of course, 40-bit encryption will always be (insecure) 40-bit encryption, no matter how many iterations he put it through; but it is frightening that he did not know that.
After his team presented their report in 2003, Rubin writes in detail how Diebold started a smear campaign against him. Not only was it Diebold, but also election officials in municipalities that had deployed the Accuvote-TS system that also maligned Rubin. This was done primarily by misinterpreting his objections, and also by refusing to pay attention to other independent reports on the insecurity of the devices.
For a more timely and somewhat humorous account of how insecure Diebold really is, see 'Hotel Minibar Key Opens Diebold Voting Machines'.
Being a whistle-blower always takes a toll on a person and Rubin was no different. He work on e-voting consumed him and took a toll on his family, career and his students. The book chronicles how Rubin found himself caught in a crossfire between big business, partisan politics, and overworked election officials. Rubin also found himself between the crosshairs of the ITAA (Information Technology Association of America), powerful vendor-based lobbying group. The ITAA, of which Diebold was a client, attempted to discredit him on many occasions, but their evidence was always weak and reckless, and in the end only served to bolster Rubin's claims against the Diebold systems.
Part of the absurd claims of the ITAA was that the open-source movement is using the issue of e-voting security to wage a 'religious war' that pits open-source software against proprietary software. Rubin could have filed chapters with similar ITAA absurdities, but wisely chose not to.
Similarly, an article I wrote 'E-Voting: It's Security, Stupid' also was the recipient of the wrathful ITAA reply. In their so-called rebuttal mistakenly titled 'E-Voting Does Work', Harris Miller of the ITAA follows his modus operandi of first attacking the person, avoiding the issue, stating vague meaningless comments, and concluding the issue by missing the point.
99% of the voting public does not know about backdoors, insecure code, Trojan Horses, insider threats, and scores of other security issues that the e-voting vendors have yet failed to fully address. The election process as we know it is rapidly being migrated to these electronic voting machines that are replacing the older, but more reliable mechanical systems.
BNB is a timely and important book as it details the very real defects on which these e-voting systems are built on (and Windows is only one of them). The ITAA made claims such that the only vulnerability within e-voting is that of a rogue programmer conspiring to steal public office. Such politicking only serves to confuse the issue for a public that is inherently trustful of these voting machines. Yet if these e-voting machines were built to the same stringencies and regulations that the aviation and pharmaceutical industry faces, they would never make it within a mile of a voting booth.
Brave New Ballot is to e-voting what Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is to the global environmental movement. It is a vitally important book that details the problem of e-voting and what can be done in the future to make certain that it can one day be carried out in a secure manner.
Of course, the image of an embedded crypto key or plaintext password in an e-voting system does not convey the same impact on the public as that of a thalidomide baby. Pictures of thalidomide babies caused heads to roll at the FDA, and one should hope the that the publication of Brave New Ballot will awaken the public from their slumber on the topic of electronic voting, and encourage the Election Assistance Commission to immediately ban electronic voting until it can be secured.
Deforest Soaries, the first Chairman of the United States Election Assistance Commission sums it up best when he states 'If the integrity of our sacred right of voting is less important than partisan politics, corporate interests, or bureaucratic systems, then shame on us for presenting ourselves as the global standard bearers of democracy. As Brave New Ballot shows, there is a lot of shame going around.
You can purchase Brave New Ballot: The Battle to Safeguard Democracy in the Age of Electronic Voting from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Brave New Ballot (BNB) is Rubin's story of how in 2003, he and his graduate students at Johns Hopkins University demonstrated that the Diebold Election Systems electronic voting technology in wide use was full of security problems. It was just in 2002 that Sherron Watkins of Enron was named Time magazine person of the year for her work in uncovering fraud at Enron. It would have been thought that Rubin's work would have immediately won him some sort of patriot of the year award for his work.
While the accolades were indeed many, his team's research was maligned as being that of a homework assignment, and the Administrator for Elections for the state of Maryland (where Rubin lives and works) publicly stated that 'computer scientists (a direct reference to Rubin and his team) who question the security of electronic voting machines are undermining our democracy.' Such a scenario makes up much of the story that the book tells in Rubin's team's efforts to blow the whistle on unsecure e-voting machines.
As to the Administrator for Elections for the state of Maryland and her disdain for computer scientists, she would likely find constituents such as the zombie-like Stepford wives more to her liking. Unfortunately, she ended up with Professor Rubin.
It is not that secure electronic voting is inherently unattainable. Rather, nearly all of the commercial solutions that have shipped to date have not been adequate designed with security in mind. This is due to many factors, some of which are that the makers of these devices do not completely understand the security risks and countermeasures, in addition to public officials who are far too trusting of these commercial e-voting vendors.
The early chapters of the book detail how Rubin's team analyzed the security and cryptography used within extremely sloppy coding of the Diebold Accuvote-TS director recording electronic device. One particularly humorous incident is when the Diebold programmers reference Bruce Schneier's Applied Cryptography in their C++ code for their decision of which algorithm to use of a for pseudorandom number generation. The only problem is that Applied Cryptography states that the specific algorithm they used should specifically not be utilized for random number generation. Rubin comically states about that incident that Diebold should have consulted with Schneier, rather than have their staff misunderstand what they read in his book.
I had a similar frustrating incident when consulting on an e-voting systems some years ago. The lead developer (who obviously was no expert in cryptography) documented that the e-voting system used 120-bit encryption. Upon analysis, we found that the system was using 40-bit encryption. When countered about that, the developer replied that they perform the 40-bit encryption routine three times using the same key, for an effective 120-bit key length. Of course, 40-bit encryption will always be (insecure) 40-bit encryption, no matter how many iterations he put it through; but it is frightening that he did not know that.
After his team presented their report in 2003, Rubin writes in detail how Diebold started a smear campaign against him. Not only was it Diebold, but also election officials in municipalities that had deployed the Accuvote-TS system that also maligned Rubin. This was done primarily by misinterpreting his objections, and also by refusing to pay attention to other independent reports on the insecurity of the devices.
For a more timely and somewhat humorous account of how insecure Diebold really is, see 'Hotel Minibar Key Opens Diebold Voting Machines'.
Being a whistle-blower always takes a toll on a person and Rubin was no different. He work on e-voting consumed him and took a toll on his family, career and his students. The book chronicles how Rubin found himself caught in a crossfire between big business, partisan politics, and overworked election officials. Rubin also found himself between the crosshairs of the ITAA (Information Technology Association of America), powerful vendor-based lobbying group. The ITAA, of which Diebold was a client, attempted to discredit him on many occasions, but their evidence was always weak and reckless, and in the end only served to bolster Rubin's claims against the Diebold systems.
Part of the absurd claims of the ITAA was that the open-source movement is using the issue of e-voting security to wage a 'religious war' that pits open-source software against proprietary software. Rubin could have filed chapters with similar ITAA absurdities, but wisely chose not to.
Similarly, an article I wrote 'E-Voting: It's Security, Stupid' also was the recipient of the wrathful ITAA reply. In their so-called rebuttal mistakenly titled 'E-Voting Does Work', Harris Miller of the ITAA follows his modus operandi of first attacking the person, avoiding the issue, stating vague meaningless comments, and concluding the issue by missing the point.
99% of the voting public does not know about backdoors, insecure code, Trojan Horses, insider threats, and scores of other security issues that the e-voting vendors have yet failed to fully address. The election process as we know it is rapidly being migrated to these electronic voting machines that are replacing the older, but more reliable mechanical systems.
BNB is a timely and important book as it details the very real defects on which these e-voting systems are built on (and Windows is only one of them). The ITAA made claims such that the only vulnerability within e-voting is that of a rogue programmer conspiring to steal public office. Such politicking only serves to confuse the issue for a public that is inherently trustful of these voting machines. Yet if these e-voting machines were built to the same stringencies and regulations that the aviation and pharmaceutical industry faces, they would never make it within a mile of a voting booth.
Brave New Ballot is to e-voting what Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is to the global environmental movement. It is a vitally important book that details the problem of e-voting and what can be done in the future to make certain that it can one day be carried out in a secure manner.
Of course, the image of an embedded crypto key or plaintext password in an e-voting system does not convey the same impact on the public as that of a thalidomide baby. Pictures of thalidomide babies caused heads to roll at the FDA, and one should hope the that the publication of Brave New Ballot will awaken the public from their slumber on the topic of electronic voting, and encourage the Election Assistance Commission to immediately ban electronic voting until it can be secured.
Deforest Soaries, the first Chairman of the United States Election Assistance Commission sums it up best when he states 'If the integrity of our sacred right of voting is less important than partisan politics, corporate interests, or bureaucratic systems, then shame on us for presenting ourselves as the global standard bearers of democracy. As Brave New Ballot shows, there is a lot of shame going around.
You can purchase Brave New Ballot: The Battle to Safeguard Democracy in the Age of Electronic Voting from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
You secure the electronic vote, you get a paper trail. Is that enough?
- recount
No, you get what happened in Mexico, where the paper trail is not checked.
Mexico, the ballots report at random, it is clear the encumbant is losing, at about 75%, a funny thing happens, ballots start coming in with huge swings to the encumbant and the challengers vote switched to a third party. The vote swings.
The election authority says its counted 98.5% of the vote but has only counted 92.5%.
The challenger says '3 million votes are missing', the election authority ridicules this, then later 'finds' 2.5 million of the missing votes. Finally they refuse to manually publicly count the votes. Instead they count only a few with totals different from the tally sheet, but if you make up the numbers its a lot easier to get those numbers to match than if you're counting the ballots, and the interesting boxes are not examined.
http://www.gregpalast.com/we-dont-need-no-stinkin
Even if you get the ballot checked, look at Thailand.
Thaksin is unpopular in Bangkok, the army takes command, drives tanks into the government, TV and into the Kings palace. The popular king is no longer seen, the army is told they are following the kings orders, and the coup plotters pretend to speak for the king. If you believe the polls they are putting out, 85% of Thais like the coup, they think the king is controlling it. But if 85% of Thais wanted Thaksin out, then the vote was next month, they could vote him out. Where is the King?
Meanwhile the men with the big tanks claim this is a popular coup and election will follow next year. But election were due next month. Due you think they will allow a government critical of the army actions? No way, dictators can never leave power for fear of arrest. So Thailand will sink into a military dictatorship for years to come.
Democracy is a constant fight, it doesn't stop at the ballot.
Here is what Rachel Carson actually said in her book: Let's look at the Wikipedia article on DDT: So the politician you quoted was completely wrong on several different levels. In her book, Rachel Carson argues for limiting the use of DDT since excessive use can harm people and also make it less effective in fighting malaria.
It turns out that even the pesticide industry agrees with her.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
The United States of America uses the "Australian Ballot" form of voting. That means everyone gets a secret ballot and the ballots are counted publicly. It was then, as it remains now, the best design to accommodate our system of elections. Please understand this essential reality before suggesting "improvements" (e.g. receipts, mail ballots, etc.).
Someone in this thread is going to state that HAVA 2002 mandates the use of electronic voting machines (aka "DRE" or direct recording electronic). That is false, as thoroughly explained in Voters Unite's Myth Breakers document.
Someone in this thread will make some statement about how electronic voting devices permit the disabled to vote in private. That's not exactly true. To the best of my knowledge, the existing products do not preserve the secret ballot. Nor are they particularly accessible. Meanwhile, there are solutions which do preserve the secret ballot and are accessible to disabled voters. Such as ES&S's AutoMark, the Vote-PAD, and EqualiVote. (There are some other novel systems, too. I just haven't researched them yet.)
Someone in this thread is going to state that electronic voting is just splendid, and we can make it work, if we just try harder next time. Fine. Show me. Then let's talk. Meanwhile, all current systems suck.
Someone in this thread is going to suggest that we have all paper ballots counted manually. Like Canada. Or Germany. It's not a bad idea. But it wouldn't work in the USA with our current constraints and expectations. To contrast, in Canada, the races are very simple and so the tabulation is feasible. In Germany, they have proportional representation and rely on their superior form of exit polls. Meaning their system is very tolerant of errors. And they have legions of civil servants working weeks to get the exact manual tally. Whereas here in the USA, politicians and news networks demand results now, now, now!
Someone in this thread may suggest it's all about the Republicans. Or the Democrats. It hasn't proven that simple. I believe it's a fight between the people in power, who want to stay in power, and us voters. I'm a pretty progressive guy. But I readily acknowledge the bad guys (with respect to election integrity) here in King County Washington are in the Democratic leadership. (My experience is that the rank and file of both major parties are completely on board with election integrity.)
Someone in this thread may also suggest that we eliminate the need for electronic voting at poll sites by transistioning to forced mail voting (100% vote by mail). Like Oregon State has done and where most of Washington State is heading. It's terribly idea. No more secret ballot. No more public vote count. Higher error rate. Huge more expensive. Long-term decline in voter turnout. It's a big topic. We've been researching it for about 9 months and have only scratched the surface. We discuss
Someone in this thread will also exhort the necessity of using a voter verified paper audit trail. They may even encourage others to support Rush Holt's HR 550. Unfortunately, the VVPAT is a placebo. What guarantees what's recorded is what's printed? Nothing. And experiences to date demonstrate that actually auditing the VVPAT is infeasible (1h 15m per ballot cast). That said, the efforts of VerifiedVoting.org and other are not misguided. Many states already have electronic voting machines without the VVPAT. So passing HR 550 would be better than nothing.
The take away point is this:
The most reliable, secure way to vote in the USA today is to use voter-correctable precinct-based optical scanners. That means paper ballots at poll sites fed into a ballot scanner.
Please support Voter Action. They have successfully prevented the use and procurement of electronic voting machines in a few states already. They are expanding the fight as fast as they can
Actually, thalidomide was one of the FDA's great successes...the drug was never approved in the US; most of the birth defects happened in Europe. It's one of the reason the FDA's drug approval process is so slow relative to other countries.