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Diebold Election Results Released By AZ Judge
Windrip writes "A judge in the case covering the nature of the database used in Diebold Gems software during Pima County, Arizona elections has ruled the DB is not a computer program (pdf). The result is that the Arizona Democratic party will have the chance to review previous elections for transparency and accuracy. ''The Pima County Democratic Party sued the county this year for the electronic databases from past elections. The party requested the databases and passwords be released according to Arizona public-records law. Pima County denied that part of the request, while turning over other records the party asked for. In closing arguments of the four-day trial that began Dec. 4, Pima County argued the databases meet the definition of a computer program, which is protected by state law, said Deputy County Attorney Thomas Denker."
It's nice to see some judges can realise that a data set is not a program, I wonder how the previous decision really came about.
Imagine the votes sitting in a beowulf-cluster of puppet-controlled machines!
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
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Why do they keep demanding recounts! Seems like the better approach would be to set out a platform that solves the basic problems for the majority of people. Instead they (both parties) spend time tearing down each other as well as themselves then run crying to the courts when things don't happen to fall their way.
Concentrate on solving the problems not trying to figure out some loop hole or proving some conspiracy and blaming others for not doing well at the polls.
I really wish there was a third party candidate that had a shot at winning.
CREATE TABLE total_votes (
democrat_vote_total TINYINT,
republican_vote_total BIGINT
);
Why do I in any case guess that this database is either MSDE or SQL Express?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
*runs to window, checks sky... hmm... not falling? wtf?*
A judge who knows the difference between a database and a program. Now, if I can find a heterosexual masseur, I've seen anything I thought could not exist.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
How is it possible in the 21st century in the USA that one uses electronic voting machines with one hand while publishing important documents as scanned images with the other one?
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
"There is a significant risk these systems could be hacked or discredited," Denker said.
I pretty much think that this is the point; and it is an important point, because without the ability to call "bullshit" then you lose the legitimacy of the votes. Any corporation wouldn't trust an accountant to maintain the books without auditing them periodically, this is basically the same thing.
also, the systems can already be hacked (quite easily I believe)
Yes, don't you love how those scheming, conniving Republicans, who had only to push around a few bits to tweak the results, manipulated the elections to throw both houses of Congress to the Democrats last year? What a brilliant way to throw people off the scent! Now if they can just get Hillary in the White House, their diabolical strangle hold on power will be all but unbreakable! MUHAHAHA
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Just a hint, they both are the same thing. Don't trust either, fight both.
Because the only way Dennis Kucinich or Cynthia McKinney will ever win an election is when some smelly fat slob in a penguin t-shirt games the machines.
A database file is just data, to be interpreted by a database program.
But the database program is just data to be interpreted by the CPU.
Data vs. document is a spectrum. There is no clear distinction. We tend to think of documents as just information, describing some structured knowledge, which is true. But by contrast, we tend to think of programs as containing primarily step-by-step instructions. But those instructions don't execute themselves. They're input to something. And moreover, not all programs are instructions. Consider Prolog, where the functions are described in terms of logical relationships, and the step-by-step instructions are inferred by the interpreter. Just because the Prolog program doesn't include instructions, per se, doesn't make us say it's not a program. At the same time, the distinction between a Prolog program and an expert system knowledge base (in term of form and function) is not clear.
Everything is just data. What makes it meaningful is the order and interpretation that we impose on it.
Close races are close races.. can go either way.. that's when manipulation is useful... If there is no doubt that someone was going to win, and they didn't, manipulation would be kind of noticeable wouldn't it ?
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
The text of the PDF requires them to release "every file .. that ends with the extension 'gbf' or 'mdb', and the password for 'gbf' files." It also mentions that the data has been scrutineered with Access.
The arguments about an Access database being a "program" are probably related to the ability of MDB to contain queries (aka stored procedures).
GBF files are encrypted / compressed MDB files. The dockit claims that "a gbf file can only be created and opened by the GEMS program", but I suspect it unpacks them to a temporary file somewhere before it opens them up with the normal library.
Other little GEMS (sorry, couldn't resist the pun)...
* "Microsoft has warned against using the mdb format for some critical applications, such as election management software."
* Each expert witness endorsed a statement that the GEMS software has significant security flaws.
If the security of the system depends on keeping the implementation secret, then it's not secure. Huckelberry's assertions are themselves an indictment of Diebold's product.
Hopefully, this ruling will lead to the removal of all of these "electoral vote control and modification machines" and getting back to a system of legit elections. I still think we need UN election monitors at every polling station in the US.
Let me fix those typos for you:
Diebold is the corporation's choice for subverting democracy.
Imagine a world where people vote, but the votes don't matter because the corporations have bribed both wings of the single party in this plutocracy. They just sit in a machine controlled by puppets of the Corporation. We are living this dream.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
What? I keed, I keed...
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Does it make you a conspiracy theorist to be suspicious and cautious when an election comes down to a few hundred votes in a state whose election commissioner was appointed by the brother of the winning candidate?!?! If it is, then give me my tin-foil hat, brother!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The 2006 election took place almost a year after the former CEO of Diebold (a diehard Bush support and major Bush fundraiser) resigned.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
All programs are data.
All data can be stored in a database.
Some data are programs.
If I store my C code in a database that does not make it "not a program."
Election results are typically not a program.
However, I could design a machine that takes this data and interprets it as instructions. For example, I could design a plotter that took the candidate's name as a change-of-direction instruction and the number of votes as a draw-a-line-this-long instruction. If I do this then the election data becomes a program in much the same way that a Postscript file is a program.
I could also be silly to prove a point and take the raw database file and feed it directly into the CPU of your choice and see how soon the program crashed.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Those of you truly interested in this story should read the firehose version.
I think the links in the firehose version of the story are more apropos to this post's tags.
Of particular concern to me is the replacement of one the original post's links with one that references a newspaper I consider to be a parody of press oversight. I would never source that bloated, piss-stained, corporate catamite in any post I write.
So, when /. writes "Windrip writes", they're lying. I didn't write what was posted on the front page of /. I didn't even provide one of the links in the story.
Nevertheless, of particular interest to /. readers might be the forensic study conducted on the DB. I found it here.
Except that Diebold's CEO is a member of the Republican party, and one of George Bush's Rangers, a class of high donation supporters for his election campaigns. Money doesn't buy loyalty when your target is already paying off someone else he supports.
The idea behind the secret ballot is to prevent things such as fraud, blackmail and coercion. I would much rather have to go through the rigmarole to make the voting process transparent and verifiable without having to resort to stripping away a basic protection that would leave me and everyone open to having real barbarian tactics used. Without a secret ballot you *have* to vote the way your social environment votes, or you're going to have some real difficulties. And that, in a democracy, is just not right.
[Ego]out
How very Hinduistically existential of you, actually. Quoting from a recent Natl. Geo. article, Faces of the Divine in the January 2008 issue (which I received earlier this week, thanks apparently to time-traveling magazine editors):
So I suppose what you describe would be the CPU's darshan of the code. (Though one could probably make a reasonable argument about which is data and which the program on the basis of specifically how dynamic the darshan needs to be to make sense of it.)
I find it somehow reassuring, and deeply cool, that certain wisdoms of the ancients can be perfectly relevant in wildly different contexts. It's also humbling to find how much our supposedly "primitive" ancestors got right in areas that we have forgotten or set aside. :)
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
I agree with virtually everything you've said save for losing on abortion. I don't think that losing on that issue will motivate people as much as you think, and losing that will be a severe blow. Realize that the left's 'base' is very different than it used to be; they didn't grow up without abortion as a right, and don't necessarily understand what it means. Further, there are a lot of cultural issues pushing them away from activism.
The best for the left - and government in general - will be to have quick and transparent reporting of exactly what the government is doing.
[Ego]out
Or at the very least, read the post and have a look at the links. This is particularly damning of /. editors:
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Look, all institutions with significant finances require rigorous auditing. We require it for business - why not for our government? They say that no one wants to see how sausage or laws are made: but it's exactly that opinion that keeps us out of the loop and powerless.
More controls. More transparency. Fewer single points of failure. It's the only solution.
[Ego]out
Where the heck have you been recently? Anyway, glad you are back. More Mars press releases, please!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Yeah right both parties are the same thing.
Prime example: Imagine the world today with a President Bush vs. a President Gore or President Kerry.
Both parties may share some of the same social diseases, and the fringe reactionary kooks of both parties are still reactionary kooks, but A==B? No way.
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." - Robert J. Hanlon
Diabolds problem is incompetent management that is more concerned with minimizing the bottom line by being cheap with their programmers and trying to make up for their crappy software with marketing, lobbyists, and lawyers instead of fixing the problems.
Would that be last year's results, or next year's? I'm here all week, try the seafood platter.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
... can we get a peek at the 2008 election results that Diebold is planning?
Have gnu, will travel.
Can we get the last 8 years of our lives back? How about the thousands of Americans that've died in combat, and the resulting 100,000+ innocent Iraqi's that've died as a consequence of this bastard?
"The Zen philosopher Basho once wrote, 'A flute with no holes is not a flute, and a doughnut with no holes is a danish'... ba-na-na-na-na-na"
Sure, everything is data. What makes it a flute, not a flute, a doughnut, or a danish is not order and interpretation imposed upon that data, but rather who is in control of the conversation when such matters are discussed. The difference between a pterodactyl and a cheese danish is whoever is making up the definition.
There's an argument that the great democratic "landslide" should've been a lot bigger: Ohio's 2006 Vote Count Now Includes A Higher Percentage Of Uncounted ballots than in 2004, And A Statistically Impossible Swing To The Republicans
And you may joke if you like, but a lot of us were seriously afraid that the Republican vote-corruption machine was strong enough to dial in whatever result they wanted, and not just act like a heavy finger on the scale.
There really isn't any question that the 2004 presidential election was dirty, the only question is "how dirty", and no one seems to have cared enough to want to find out.
Honest, I didn't mean to shoot him! I didn't know the gun was loaded.
And you base this opinion on what, precisely?
Myself, I think that's insanely optimistic. The 2004 election showed odd discrepancies in the exit polls in Bushes favor, and they correlated with battle ground states and the use of electronic voting machines.
Yes Virginia, vote fraud happens, and sometimes it even happens here.
The fact that Diebold's central tabulator used Microsoft Access?
(Reported in several stories, notably a DVD called "Invisible Ballots")
That their hardware is some of the most programmer-friendly ever (straight X86 CPU, SDcard, CompactFlash sockets)?
(This is a simplified, smaller version of a larger report. A quick Google search will reveal more.)
WindowsCE OS?
(Same report as above)
Executable Scripts on the ballot-definition CF cards?
(Demonstrated in "Invisible Ballots", also known as the Hursti Hack)
By one set of measures these sorts of decisions are hallmarks of el-cheapo implementation of systems that should have been designed to meet far more rigorous standards of security and reliability.
Finally, I refer you to the author of a nice little easter-egg that he was asked to write: Clint Curtis
The *most charitable* characterization of this issue is that these people are guilty of professional negligence. Anyone understanding the importance of elections to this society and that (especially recently) elections are extremely high value to some people, and are hotly contested, would understand that voting systems should be developed under the strictest, most disciplined methodologies.
It is clear that none of the major voting system suppliers have bothered with the most basic architecture, design, verification and validation methodologies.
And for some reason, you're assuming that this is solely a matter of incompetence and not corruption, in spite of evidence that the problems with these things skewed the election in a particular direction?
I may owe everyone an apology... The *most charitable* characterization of their misbehavior is professional neglect.
In my heart of hearts, the execrable security performance of the top three electronic vendors is reflective of intentional misconduct. I simply don't say such things publicly as if they were factual, since it is possible that they were simply a bunch of putzes going for HAVA money.
It's a near statistical impossibility that in all but one instance, the variances between exit polls and the "official totals" favored one candidate, across all states, all precincts nationwide.
In New Mexico, the relationship between "surprisingly high" undervote statistics correlates nearly perfectly with paper versus electonic voting.
In the 2006 election in Florida district 13, there are 18000 undervotes in a contested congressional election. People took the time to participate in an off-year election in 2006, voted for other offices and issues, but *didn't vote* in the hotly contested big congressional race? Riight...
I live in central Ohio and saw firsthand during the 2004 election that progressive-leaning and democratic-leaning voting precincts and districts had waiting lines that didn't drop below 2 hours all day. During high traffic times, waiting times increased to 3 or 4 hours. In ex-urban districts, the waiting times rarely exceeded 20 minutes. This is not technical hacking, but it illustrates the "value" of having electronic systems to serve as a means for manipulating elections.
It is documented in "invisible Ballots" that many of the people who originated the company that eventually became Diebold Election Systems were all multiply-convicted felons. Their crimes? Variations on a common theme: computer fraud!
So, I *believe* that there's massive fraud. But I have been prevented from investigating properly, as have been many others. So it's not possible to nail it down legally. The result is that I have to say "probable" and "incompetent" because I cannot legally say "they are liars and thieves".
Ah, I get it. You're stuck on the "innocent until proven guilty" slogan. But you ain't the judge, and we're not at present talking about throwing anyone in jail: there is no reason we need to apply the criteria of the US criminal justice system in our estimates of what probably happened.
It is admittedly adviseable to tone down the rhetoric when one is discussing this point, though, because it's all too easy to be dismissed as a crank if you know more about the subject than average. Myself, I try to stick to something like "there is some reason to doubt the integrity of the 2004 election, and the issue has never been throughly investigated".
You seriously regard the Arizona Daily Star as a hideous news source? Wow. Get some perspective, man. We could do far worse. (He could have quoted the Tucson Citizen, for example.)
I suspect the change of news source by the
In a word, yes.
I am very active in the central Ohio voting reform movement, and it is important to distinguish between statements I believe to be true versus statements that are demonstrably true. It's too easy to fall into a variety of traps and this work is far too important to lose credibility due to hyperbolic speech.
There is also the legal threat: Powerful, wealthy people are pissed off at people like me and I am watching my Ps and Qs carefully. The electronic voting systems people have been making *big* money here as they have been elsewhere, and they are no different from anyone else who does not want the gravy train stopped by a bunch of citizens insisting on honest elections.
The two parties in the two party system are just tools. If you really want their masters, you must talk to corporate and syndicate entities.
InnerWeb
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.