Slashdot Mirror
US Voting Machines Standards Open To Public
Online Voting writes "The U.S. Election Assistance Commission has published new voting systems testing and certification standards for 190 days of public comment. For all the critics of electronic voting, this is your opportunity to improve the process. This will be the second version of the federal voting system standards (the first version is the VVSG 05). To learn more about these Voluntary Voting System Standards see this FAQ."
I just could not vote for any of the links. We need a strong voting standard to show some leadership.
- Printed voting receipt
- All code open source, all architecture fully documented and publicly available
- No person-vote information recorded in database (database lists people as "voted" or "not voted", as soon as person enters a vote it changes to "voted" and won't allow another vote, while a separate database increments a counter for a particular candidate. These two databases are NOT linked together.
- No timestamps to ensure manual matchmaking between people and votes are not possible.
Ah hell. I could come up with lots of other reasonable suggestions, but its not like any of this will ever be implemented.
Has anyone else noticed that more money and time and effort has been spent trying to make and use good, fair, electronic voting machines than it would have taken to just keep using paper ballots and have them counted like usual? Isn't the point to save money and time and make it more efficient? I think another point was to make elections less riggable and more accurate but Diebold killed that dumb idea behind a long time ago lol.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Now all we need are some calls that query and listen to when Diebold changes people's votes, then automatically record & report the events to an independent 3rd-party.
With Diebold's incompetence, this shouldn't be too hard to do, should it?
prefer our Diebold Overlords. It takes all the guesswork out of the voting process. There's something comforting knowing the outcome of an election months before the day.
Too bad neither of the "major" political parties has the country's interests at heart, or we would have real, open standards for the machines themselves, and not just a voluntary fucking testing process.
expandfairuse.org
It could be PGP tagged.
Where does this fear of opening source code come from? Is there really a concern that some competing software vendor will copy their "tally up the votes" routine. I can see why banks and private companies want closed source, but why here?
The only answer I can see is that the machines are badly programmed or they have been rigged in some way.
Tag this story as "inaccurate", "badtitle", or "badsummary"? If the source code isn't open to the public then this is basically a dog & pony show, IMO.
"Time is nothing; timing is everything."
...When you can simply bombard the numb populace with expensive television advertising, purchase stories in the "news entertainment media," bribe them by appealing to their greedy special interests, and manipulate them through churches and synagogues?
They don't have to hack the voting machines. They've already hacked the voters. Just as Plato predicted they would!
Anti-Globalism
Dear grahamsz,
In response to your question, "Is there really a concern that some competing software vendor will copy their 'tally up the votes' routine", we here at Diebold take great pride in the quality of our product. Our "tally up the votes"TM routine is a prized trade secret developed through extensive research and experimentation. If our competitors could simply copy our unique technique for counting votes they could develop the same product without incurring the significant costs of researching how to count.
I'm sure you can appreciate the sensitive technical know-how at the core of our product. Only a few vendors have discovered the secret to counting votes. If this knowledge became public anyone could count see how we count votes which would take away our incentive to create a much valued product which serves to protect democracy.
God Bless America,
Tom Swidarski
CEO of Diebold, Inc.
I definitely recommend reading the guidelines. There's a lot of stuff in there.
It is interesting that the guidelines propose Open-Ended Vulnerability Testing, which is essentially described as a red-team exercise. This is a new and significant addition.
The second chapter of the introduction provides a good rundown of the new material in the guidelines.
Scantron and a #2 pencil.
It doesn't even need to be modified. Actually, it should be in the guidelines that it is encased in a solid unbreakable enclosure and not have any custom software, the same scantron software they use in high schools.
Maybe a second system to check who has voted and to prevent doubles (not connected to the scantron machine in any way)
No input problems
Very accurate counting
No link between voter and vote
Accurate, tamper proof paper trail (given that votes aren't thrown away, but they should match a electronic tally)
See the problem is when you input on a computer screen it's bound to have errors/crashes hardware defects etc. The computer also serves as a filter, possibly misprinting the paper ballot, or registering the electronic vote incorrectly.
And how does diebold manage to fuck up the machines so badly, they sound like a failed cs11 project, distributed access unencrypted access databases?
My problem with the term "software independence" is that it is misnamed. The guidelines give a definition of "software independence" that does not actually mean the election's correctness will be independent of software. Their definition is much narrower -- to achieve what they call "software independence," all that is necessary is a software-free way to audit the count of recorded votes. This has two big weaknesses:
- Altering recorded votes is not the only way to tamper with an election. For example, this definition ignores the preparation and presentation of the ballots to voters. What about votes that are wrongly recorded, or never recorded at all? What if software failures are biased toward a particular group of voters?
- It describes a vote count that is less than fully dependent on software. A voting system that is vulnerable to software bugs in 99.9% of realistic situations still counts as "software independent," as long as it's not 100% dependent. A system can technically be called "software independent" matter how vanishingly small the chances are of detecting a software error, and no matter how much work it would take to detect the error, as long as someone can conceive of a procedure that would detect it.
I think this is kind of sad, because it means we can no longer say "software independent" to describe voting systems that are actually independent of software, as in not dependent on software, i.e. what most people would think the term means.I worked on the old mechanical voting machines in the early 90s. They were hard programed for with little keys that controlled the voting levers for each question. At the end, a giant summary sheet was printed out and totals were hand checked against number of people who voted and totals on the summary sheet. After the election was certified the machines had all the keys removed.
So how freaking hard is it to burn one PROM with the questions/canadates names to be displayed on the screen and a second PROM to contain the "Voting Control Keys"?
1) Certify the serial numbered PROMs
2) Seal the machines
3) Have the election
4) Certify the machine, print the summary sheet.
5) recover and process the machines results.
6) verify automated results vs summary sheets totals.
7) Certify the election
8) Wait whatever time needed for recount appeals
9) Break seals and pull PROMs and put in sealed storage.
Copyright (c) by the human race.
But what to do ones you notice "irregularities"? Will you ask everyone from the county, who voted, to come over and hand out the printout? And then, who is to guarantee that those printouts can't be tampered with?
in PDF Format.
Wouldn't it be better to start with an open standard around the election process for information exchange and the like? This Already Exists and is "recommended" by the US Government. Why only recommended? Surely this exactly the sort of thing that should be enforced as a basic requirement. Its not like the US Government could claim "we can't enforce that standard as vendors might not want to use it" its the US frigging Government legislate is what they do.
So a good start on the standards but it would be good to see compulsion come in.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Bzzt. Thanks for playing. The United States of America is still a banana republic. What is so difficult about full and open scrutiny? The first principle of any electronic voting system is that it should be open. There can be no proprietary code. It doesn't matter if Joe Six-pack can't read it, as long as someone who is independent from the government and the contractor can.
Walk into polling centre (these are set up in schools and community halls and are likely less than a mile from your house), pick up piece of paper, go to a booth, put your mark in the box next to a name (With a big sign up saying if you miss the box or mark two you're not going to be counted), put it in the ballot box.
Punch cards, machines, everything else, just unnecessary. I never understood the whole situation in the US where you have people queueing and some unable to vote due to being in line too long.
One would almost think the organisers didn't want people to vote...
If the receipt shows that you have voted, but doesn't show how you voted, I don't see what use it is to making the process verifiable.
On the other hand, if the receipt does show how you voted, it defeats the point of the secret ballot.
...I do agree with the open source part (at least, meaning "all voting and counting software must be available for inspection.")
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
This is utter silliness. So what if you review the code? So what if there are "open standards"? The code you review can be swapped out on election day any number of ways! I mean, you are all programmers, mostly. How can you possibly fall for this? And there is code on the point of voting, code at the accumulators boxen, running Windows may I add, code at HQ adding up the accumulators' totals. It's the work of a morons's minute to swap out vote totals, or change the code at the point of voting to simply flip the voter's choice undetectably -- printing out a "receipt" that is worthless as record of what actually happened. The code can be changed and then replaced instantly. Or more likely, why bother? Who the hell can tell what code is really running on the box? The problem here is you all have a religious belief that when you ask a computer a question, you'll get an honest answer. But these are dedicated boxen, controlled by humans who are extremely motivated to alter the results. You can't beat them. You can only remove the means. No computers system should ever come near an election.
Canada does (did? sigh) vote using a manual process with real time oversight by suspicious characters from both parties present -- you know, the process we decided was mad in Florida in 2000. Somehow they finish up their elections in hours. Although, really, what the hell is the hurry to finish an election? Why not take a week? Someone REALLY wants to alter those votes. They want it quick, unmonitored, and completely open to tampering, and somehow this is the Only Way To Do It?
This idiocy wouldn't stand if we didn't have Kourictainment for a news media... god.
Yes, and I suggest reading the FAQ, too:
"Q: Will the source code be available to the public?
A: No. The EAC will make all information available to the public consistent with Federal law. The EAC is prohibited under the Trade Secrets Act (18 U.S.C. 1905) from making the source code information available to the public.
This is a bad idea. A much better idea is this: "No voting machine shall be certified unless the vendor makes the source code available for public inspection." This is fully in compliance with 18 U.S.C. 1905: any company has the right to keep their code proprietary. However, if they do so, they should not be allowed to have their machines used in public elections.
Voting should be secret. Vote counting should never be secret.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
We use paper here in Minnesota, and the ballots are scanned with an optical scanner. It's pretty damn easy, on the ballot are two arrows next to the name and you draw a line between them if you want that selection.
The amazing thing is you can still vote if the power goes out.
It's highly scalable, as voting station tables are cheap and easy to store and setup. you can have a two dozen of them at a polling station for not much money.
The optical scanner is there to count ballots. But they can be counted by hand if need be.
Anything else is TECHNOLOGY IN SEARCH OF A PROBLEM.
Oh yeah, Florida dumped their stupid electronic machines and plan to use the optical scanner like we have in minnesota. Maybe because it works. duh
They should just allow you to text a vote in. One vote one phone. Only from registered phones. That would get rid of the queues.
there is no need for computer technology to be incorporated into voting. in fact, it unnecessarily opens the system to fraud. ANY database solution is inherently open to corruption on a massive scale without the ability to audit the results. people (around the globe) have been casting votes for hundreds of years without the need of a black box intermediary. in america, as most places there are plenty of volunteers who will monitor polling stations and tally the ballots. should staffing ever become a problem, summon citizens in a manner similar to jury duty. (although, i seriously doubt this in any where near being problematic.) the volunteers count ballots using the basic count/recount/audit methods used by most schools selecting asb officers (albeit with any additionally required security measures?). this process is incredibly simple and causes "election rigging" to require massive manpower and coordination to achieve - in contrast to electronic voting (including scantron and every other method i've heard of) which is moderately complicated to coordinate and opens the possibility of fraud without recourse. no need for punch cards. no need for electronic terminals. no need for databases. paper, pen, volunteers, calculators, supervisors.
The press release http://www.eac.gov/vvsg/News/press/eac-seeks-public-comment-on-tgdc2019s-recommended-voluntary-voting-system-guidelines-online-comment-tool-now-available says the VVSG will be open for public comment for the next 120 days. After the 120 days they will internally review/modify the document and then re-open it for comments for another 120 days. If you have posted some brilliant, insightful bit of wisdom here on slashdot for karma... PLEASE TAKE THE TIME TO LEAVE A COMMENT IN THE RELEVANT SECTION OF THE VVSG. I am guessing comments that get posted in this first 120 day period will have more influence than those posted in the second 120 day period.
It's what we do when they fail that makes a difference. Right the broken machines and processes. Yes. But prepare for the glitch. Change election laws to recognize statistically improbable results for what they are and let those voters who were victims of the failed process resubmit their vote. A MARGIN OF ERROR: BALLOTS OF STRAW, novel of the stolen election. Featured on http://votersunite.org/
It assumes the voting system is based on the "VOTING MACHINE" and not the algorithm's and network.
The assumption is that voting is based on the "VOTING MACHINE", but this isn't always the case.
So any system fitting there template must rely heavily on "SECURE VOTING MACHINE HARDWARE" and looks at physical Security totally over looking the network and electronic security.
My largest single concern is the possibility of a clever software trick that could alter larger numbers of votes in mass using some automated process.
Such as pre-loading the "BLANK" voting cards with a negative and positive bias in favor of one candidate that was seen in the last big election. This was caught when some candidates had negative votes, something that shouldn't be possible!
I will post here next my MailClad system that doesn't require any secure hardware or networks..
It's a rough draft but any criticism and suggestions are appreciated.
It assumes all are untrusted.
Hopefully I will be able to get this up on my web site soon mailclad.com and it's sourceforge page.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
MailClad system that doesn't require any secure hardware or networks..
This is a very rough draft but any criticism and suggestions are appreciated.
my approach, it's actually very simple, and based on the same solution that the Horse racing tracks, Vegas Casino's, lotto lottery system uses and many others.
Plain Random numbers, in a secure data base, no encryption at all. The "software" and underlying network, will not be able to alter or bias any of the results.
See: http://www.dnull.com/~sokol/patent/WO2005048082A2.pdf
This is related and similar in concept.
Mailclad is very similar to the scratch off lottery tickets. Something time tested, secure since there is a LOT of money at stake and something even old people can use.
Mail is assumed to be too cumbersome to interfere with and not go unnoticed. There are already laws in place protecting it and special agencies already in place to investigate mail theft.
So a person gets a letter in the mail, in that letter there is printed numbers, possibly with bar codes. maybe scratch off or tear off or anything really. That person then can enter those number into a web site, over the phone, or at a polling location, that is using regular off the shelf PC's or Mac, or anything with a web browser or some data collection GUI or scripts to collect these number.
The numbers are all unique, for each candidate, and voter. The only place the "meaning" of these numbers is recorded is in 2 locations.
1.) on the paper mailed out.
2.) in a Vault where the letters were printed and mailed out from.
#2 is a process that is identical to the Lotto and racetrack tickets, where again a LOT of money is at stake and has never been cheated.
So number are collected, and shared publicly with all parties.
After the election, the number and there associations to the "votes" are shared publicly also. So at that point anyone can compute the election results.
The data that connects a voter to there numbers only is on the mailed letter, and not recorded, so there is know knowledge who received what numbers.
Hence the Name MAILCLAD, where the public mail service provides much of the security, and the sheer physical BULK and tamper proof mail envelopes.
In my scheme, Total anonymity is given, while results can easily be verified.
Problem here is several,
Computers can not be trusted.
Humans from any single organization can not be trusted.
(I assume some small centralized over site by several opposing parties is safe)
Communication network can not be trusted.
Any cryptographic system based on Primes can be cracked with sufficient CPU power, or Quantum computers.
This covers all DES, AES, RSA, PGP and public key systems
cryptography seems to ignore information theory, specifically what is needed to extract a signal from noise or alter it.
Based on information theory my system is unbreakable
Other considerations here.
Voters must be protected from coercion, such as from a workers Union that might wish to verify someones vote.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso