Source Code Access Denied in Disputed Race

MrMetlHed writes "A judge ruled Friday that congressional aspirant Christine Jennings has no right to examine the source code that runs the electronic voting machines at the center of a disputed Southwest Florida congressional race. From the article: 'The ruling Friday from Judge Gary prevents for now the Jennings camp from being able to use the programming code to try to show voting machines used in Sarasota County malfunctioned. Jennings claims that an unusually large number of undervotes (ballots that didn't show a vote) recorded in the race implies the machines lost the votes.'"

Comments

Outrageous

[Xeth]

This is precisely why government shouldn't be using closed-box commercial software. We have no idea whether the machines are functioning as advertised. Do people not realize that we're essentially just handing a bunch of ballots to these companies and then just accepting the verdict they hand down? It boggles the mind that any democracy-loving representative can stand for this. Maybe there just aren't any left?

Re:Outrageous

[wakejagr]

There are at least two reasons why there is little uproar about these machines using closed-source software.

• most people (including judges, elected officials, and others who are in a position to directly change the situation) don't realize that having no access to the source code means votes cast using the machines are unverifiable
• too many people (especially those who are only in a position to indirectly change the situation: voters) feel that the situation with these machines is no more broken than the rest of the system. Remember hanging chads?

Re:Outrageous

[secolactico]

most people (including judges, elected officials, and others who are in a position to directly change the situation) don't realize that having no access to the source code means votes cast using the machines are unverifiable

Judges are not expected to be expert at every subject. They should, however, be able to find expert advice for the subject at hand. Both parts should have presented properly accredited expert witnesses and the court might have retained independent experts as well (IANAL).

If the fact that the judge is not knowledgeable enough to rule accordingly in an issue indicates that the judicial system (in addition to the election system) might be broken.

Or maybe the complainant dropped the ball somewhere in the process.

Re:Outrageous

[Holmwood]

Actually, paper and pencil are a pretty good approach. Simply because a solution is old doesn't mean it's a bad one nor does it mean that the shiniest new piece of technology is the best answer.

Assuming a situation where there's reasonable oversight of most votes most of the time, and opportunities to be alone with ballots for more than a minute don't generally exist:

- Electronic voting machines? An attacker can change thousands of votes in a second.
- Punched cards? An attacker can shove a ten cent piece of steel through the hole for the preferred candidate and invalidate a hundred ballots for the opponent in a few seconds.
- Paper? Well, an attacker can start spoiling every ballot for the opponent, but that's going to take time. Quite a bit of time. And the attacker will be leaving some forensic evidence.

Canada -- a country geographically even larger than the US with probably even more serious geographic distribution problems -- has generally used paper ballots for a great many years. Elections are typically counted and results are in by somewhere between 10pm for local/provincial elections and maybe 2am (eastern) for Federal elections.

Most of all, a paper ballot system is comprehensible and reasonably transparent to the ordinary voter. Not so with even open-source software (which may be transparent and comprehensible to some, but is neither to the average voter).

If you really want something that's counted fast, use paper ballots scanned into optical scanners (and deposited in locked ballot boxes for later inspection/recounts) in front of the voter.

Paper and pencils: A technology who's time has come.

Holmwood.

unfuckingbelivable

[Anonymous Coward]

The source code for such nasty machines should by definition be publicly available. Who the fuck trusts those devices when its source code is unavailable??

Re:unfuckingbelivable

[A beautiful mind]

I would mod up parent if I could, as it perfectly catches the gist of the problem. The profanity is there to hilight the seriousness of what people who believe in democracy face. Anyone who belittles the problem by political correct weaselwords does a disservice and does not contribute to the/a solution.

Not knowing the source code for a voting machine is the equivalent to saying "a miracle happens here" at a critical part in a mathematical proof. Completely utterly unnaceptable.

Re:unfuckingbelivable

[Architect_sasyr]

Indeed, despite their choice of language, they have it in one.

Just because, in this case, the judge won't understand it, or the company thinks they stand to lose money from letting it be seen, doesn't mean we shouldn't be able to see it... my latest GPS device (a TomTom) has an Open Source system on it, runs on Linux. Thankfully, I don't understand it, and I don't want to, its not my field. BUT WHEN IT COMES DOWN TO IT, if for a second I didn't trust the machine, I could take a look and know exactly what it was doing.

With a voting machine this should be an integral part of the trust process... we know how the box where we slip our voting slips works... why should we not know how the machine we punch our answers into work the same way?

At least it's just "for now"...

[NewToNix]

This will surely be appealed, it's a bad decision on the Judge's part. And here's the obligatory IANAL bit.

But I am able to call bull shit when I see it. And refusing them, or at least a mutually agreed on qualified party, to review the code in question is asinine.

And proof positive that these things, if allowed at all, MUST be open source.

Whaddya mean "there is no conflict"?

[Dachannien]

I don't get it. In this case, the plaintiff isn't allowed to view presumably proprietary/copyrighted source code for a voting machine to go on a fishing expedition to see whether it caused her to lose.

On the other hand, the RIAA gets not only to view the contents of a woman's hard drive to go on a fishing expedition to see whether she was sharing music files, but they get to make their own copy of it, including all that stuff they don't hold the copyright on (Windows, the woman's e-mails, etc.).

It seems to me that what's good for the turkeys oughta be good for us chickens. Or something.

logic and reason

[bnf]

The inability to assess the logic of casting votes defies reason.

How long must we sing this song? A democracy without transparent practices for the transfer of power is not a democracy. All the way down to the ones and zeroes. Every question with regard to voting should be able to be answered.

It seems so primitive that it baffles me how someone could arrive at any other conclusion than "the process of voting is sacred and should, in fact *must*, bear great scrutiny".

Re:Nothing tests code like the real world

[DRJlaw]

There's definitely something screwy going on. From the article, about 18000 votes were accepted that didn't actually vote for anything. Now, if I was designing an e-voting package, there's no way I'd mark a vote as accepted if it didn't vote for something, especially in a country like the US where voting is not mandatory. After all, if they've bothered to turn up at the voting booth, you can assume they actually intended to vote.

You're misreading the article.

"Some 18,000 Sarasota County electronic ballots did not register a vote in the race, a much higher undervote rate _ nearly 15 percent _ than in others such as those for governor or U.S. Senate. Jennings contends the machines lost the votes. Buchanan backers and the company say that if there was an unusually large undervote it was likely because of bad ballot design."

There were 18,000 people who did not vote for either Jennings or Buchanan (or another option, if any). People routinely vote for "none of the above" when they dislike each of the candidates, when they have little information about the candidates, etc. You cannot refuse to accept the voter's selections once the voter has showed up at the polls and voted in even one race, because that may very well be the voter's intent. Arguably, you cannot refuse to accept a submission that contains no selections, because that too may be the voter's intent.

You are at best arguing about the sufficiency of the selection review prior to a submission. There is not enough information in the article to discuss this information, and it does not support the candidate's allegations of fraud, so that it is essentially irrelevant to the legal case taking place after the election. You're free to argue against the ballot presentation selected/entered by the various Boards of Election, but you can hardly argue based solely on the undervote that this was a programming "feature" or design defect.

A little Stalin seems fitting...

[SpectreHiro]

"The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."

Please don't be confused... I don't think Joseph Stalin was a great man. I consider him a despicable and cold blooded tyrant. At the same time, I also happen to think he was a pretty sharp thinker, and a successful tyrant because he understood how political systems function. A democratic system cannot work unless there is absolute transparency in the voting process.

I'm an open source supporter but not a zealot. I don't have any problem with the existence of closed-source commercial software and I believe it has a right to exist. That being said, there's simply no place for closed-source software in our voting process. Voting is the foundation of our political system, and we can't settle for any ambiguity in its implementation. It's not as if vote counting is a technically demanding job, and there's no argument for keeping secret the process by which it's done.

This strikes me as a clear judicial mistake (not that I've read the article... too drunk and tired, frankly). In general, our judges don't seem to understand information technology well enough to make informed decisions. They don't understand that changing the results of an election is elementary for any programmer. Isn't that concept terrifying?

Our society is enamored with the labor saving possibilities made possible by the past century's technological advances, but thus far, the understanding of these technologies in government has not matched their application. This trend must not continue if we value our republic. In the strictest sense, our system is no longer a democracy if it has no educated oversight.

Our government needs an elected body of IT experts -- some kind of technically proficient oversight body that can rule on information technology as it applies to our system of government. Without any such educated oversight, our freedom and sovereignty is bit by bit diminished, and can be turned against our people. The possibility alone demands action.

Our founding fathers certainly didn't foresee the coming of mechanical information processing, but I firmly believe they would have wanted it to be open to review by the common man. What we need now are are IT patriots willing and motivated to take up the cause.