Can Static Electricity Generate Votes?

artgeeq writes "A recent local election in Washington, DC resulted in 1500 extra votes for a candidate. The board of elections is now claiming that static electricity caused the malfunction. Is this even remotely possible? If so, couldn't an election be invalidated pretty easily?"

Comments

Valid election?

[stm2]

I can't understand how do you people accept voting with back boxes (that is, w/o access to source code).

Re:Valid election?

[j0nb0y]

I personally have no problem with black box voting machines, provided that they print out a human readable ballot, and the printed ballot is the only official ballot for the purpose of vote counting.

Open source was always a distraction from the real issue. I like open source, but we shouldn't use this issue to try to push open source. It just doesn't make sense. Open source doesn't guarantee security. If the computer is responsible for maintaining the vote total, there will be the possibility of mischief, whether the software is open source or not.

Re:Valid election?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I agree that open source is a distraction from the real issue(though it is, I would argue, a likely part of the solution to the real issue, so it comes up for a reason); but I think that the real issue is slightly different. For the purpose of discussion, I propose a measure, call it the "Nixon Number". A system's Nixon Number is the smallest plausible number of people who would have to conspire in order to subvert that system successfully. The real problem with electronic voting is not closed vs. open per se, it is the fact that, thus far, we keep building systems with pitifully low Nixon Numbers in order to do the job, when what we need is the exact opposite. A system's Nixon Number depends on hardware, software, procedures, and institutional safeguards.

Open Source licencing is not necessary to build a system with high Nixon Number, nor is it assured that an OSS system will have one. However, I would argue that(barring substantial advances in static analysis of binaries, or the like) publicly auditable code, along with a publicly available trusted compiler, publicly disclosed hashes of all binaries, etc, etc. is in practice necessary to achieve a Nixon Number high enough to be considered for critical uses like voting. The code doesn't have to be under a licence allowing free reuse, or reuse at all; but it must be available for inspection by anybody, for any reason, without limitation or expense.

That alone is by no means good enough, the other main issue is hardware security. Unfortunately, techniques for assuring that hardware is doing what it ought to be are as yet immature(see this from EETimes). In practice, voting and similar critical systems should probably be conducted on minimal complexity systems, so that the necessary chips can be manufactured with oversight, in secure fabs, and optically or otherwise verified.

Even, that, though, isn't enough. Beyond hardware and software security and transparency, a high Nixon Number requires that the technology be surrounded by a robust institutional structure. We have, thus far, failed here as well. The election commissions have, on the whole, done an awful job of enforcing oversight of voting system vendors, and have rubber stamped known broken systems.



Ultimately, I think the difficulties of electronic voting have two parts. The first is that it isn't an easy problem. The second is that we don't take it nearly seriously enough. If elections are not free and fair, democracy has fallen. Period. Full Stop. No ifs, ands, or buts. E voting is not something to be done on the cheap. It is not something we can trust vendors to do. We are treating E voting like a minor IT procurement project, when we should be treating it as Democracy's Manhattan Project.

Re:Valid election?

[Smallpond]

You do realize that a result with only a 0.001 chance of happening still does happen 1 time in a thousand, don't you? How are you going to base anything on a random sampling? You can't prove an outcome is biased, only that the likelihood has a certain probability of occurrence.

Re:Valid election?

[johannesg]

There is no NEED for E-voting. 12-24 hours to handcount paper ballots is sufficient and also enough to have the counting audited/supervised by independent parties.

The problem then becomes, 'How do we determine who is an independent party who is unbiased enough to give us a truthful audit?' Other than that little problem, though, I agree with you fully.

Ok, since you apparently lack any kind of clue I will spell it out for you... To solve this conundrum, you must figure out who might be interested in a fair outcome. That suggests you might want to include people from every group you can vote for (easy in the US), and any concerned citizens who do not want to live in a dictatorship.

Then you get all these people together and let them count. Once all present agree on the outcome, the vote is final.

Now, for the sake of argument, let's say you want to subvert this process. The number of people you have to subvert includes the entire set of counters, in enough counting stations that it makes a difference. That's thousands, possibly tens of thousands of people (that's the high "Nixon Number" of an earlier poster). A conspiracy with that many people is hard to keep hidden. And that's precisely why you need to count like this.

Solution?

[iminplaya]

Paper ballots?

Re:Solution?

[compro01]

I find it difficult to believe that people cannot design and implement a reliable, electrically actuated hole punching machine usable by everyone eligible to vote in the bloody country.

Repeat it?

[sqrt(2)]

Generating static electricity isn't very difficult. I can't imagine it would be very hard to repeat this problem and prove that static was causing it. But the whole idea of the scientific method has really fallen out of favor in this country, why not just make up an explanation that feels true instead of investigating. I'm sure no one was trying to sway the elections...

Electronic voting is such a horrible, horrible idea.

Re:Repeat it?

[rtconner]

I think the point is that this is not physically even possible, and it's obvious that lies are being told. A data storage device that is not protected from static electricity is not a storage device at all.

Re:Repeat it?

[PatDev]

Electronic voting is such a horrible, horrible idea.

Not really true. Electronic voting is a great idea implemented very badly. Let's consider how it compares to paper ballots:

• If everyone is honest.
  • Paper ballots produce the correct output.
  • Electronic ballots produce the correct output.
• If those counting the votes are not honest.
  • Paper votes get recounted if and only if someone powerful enough convinces a judge to order a recount.
  • The incorrect outcomes are hopefully detected beforehand in the massive open nationwide audit (because that should exist).

The problem isn't that electronic voting is a bad idea, the problem is that as a citizen I can't audit the code. Remember, if you put an honest algorithm into a computer, you get an honest answer.

Re:Repeat it?

[PatDev]

Agreed. Every voting system has a point of failure somewhere. Those who actually count the votes must trust that those who bring votes to them are bringing actual ballots. Once each polling place tolls its own votes, these are added up elsewhere, where they are assuming they are getting honest data.

The point isn't that it's bulletproof, the point is that its better. The more humans we can involve openly before the election and the fewer humans we can involve unsupervised during the election, the better.

Re:Repeat it?

[Spy der Mann]

Here in Mexico we have a quite different electoral system:

To vote, voters are given IDs with photograph to make sure they don't cheat and vote twice.

The ones counting the votes are citizens (chosen randomly, just like members of a jury), supervised by a representative of each one of the political parties, who can complain later about any bad behavior they saw.

Later, the urns with all the ballots are sent to the main office of the electoral institute, also independent from the government (but funded by it), who then take the count results - if there is a complaint, the complaint is followed and the ballots are recounted. If they can't for some reason (such as the evidence of ballots being stolen - they're numbered), the urn is declared null and its votes are not counted for the final result.

After all the complaints are addressed, the partial count results are summed by the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), and the winner is declared.

This procedure is expensive, slow and exhausting, but at least it's guaranteed to give honest results.

Excuse me?

[iminplaya]

Also, voters wearing paraphernalia, caps, t-shirts and stickers, for candidates to the voting precinct, the board of elections said if poll workers see it, they will throw people out.

I guess these places are not free speech zones.

Bullshit.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I don't buy it. Static can definitely frag electronic devices that aren't properly protected; but having static damage and/or random bit flipping cause 1500 extra votes to appear in an otherwise valid filesystem is the computer equivalent of a human getting cancer and, instead of a lethal tumor, growing an extra, fully functional eye.

At best, the system is seriously, seriously flawed. If there is even basic checksumming in place(never mind signing) it would be functionally impossible for static damage to imitate valid data. At bad, there is some other error entirely, and it has been decided that an idiot emitting bullshit is cheaper and easier than actually investigating the problem. At worst, which is upsettingly plausible, the system is suffering from outright fraud, and those involved don't even feel the need to lie convincingly.

Re:Bullshit.

[GrpA]

Actually, depending on just how badly designed the system is (think primary-school-level understanding of technology that most managers have) it could be plausible... Especially without any details on how the system works.

Static (when it doesn't destroy an input by shorting out the diode protection network on it) causes a signal to be received.

If you designed a basic enough cartridge (eg, 1 button on each input, with the cartridge just registering "Button Presses") then yes, I can actually imagine that causing false votes registered.

And I can also imagine vote machines using this type of technology as non-tech savvy people design this equipment and I've seen designs as stupid as this in money changing machines...

And it didn't take the kids at arcades long to figure out rub your feet on the carpet, get free coins.

If they can make this mistake on a machine giving out their own money, then beleive me, it's not that much of a stretch of imagination to beleive they would do something equally stupid in the design of a voting machine.

GrpA

slot machines are protected from static shocks and

[Joe The Dragon]

slot machines are protected from Static shocks and other hacks and this seems like a hack job and not a static shock.

Why can't they make voting systems that are just as hard to hack?

I think that the NGC should look at the voting system to see how bad they are.

Re:What's in a word?

[Ironsides]

Trust me. When talking about D.C., SNAFU is ALWAYS the right word.

Re:My friends

[Anonymous Coward]

To disagree with El Presidente is to be unpatriotic.

That, or she is as clueless as she seems.

Re:I can see...

[IdolizingStewie]

Somehow I don't see voting in pencil as a good method of preventing votes from being changed. Can I vote in pen instead?

Re:Having worked with embedded systems

[Just Some Guy]

While it is indeed possible for static electricity to jostle bus lines, power supply lines, etc..., I find it rather unlikely that static discharge would add an extra 10111011100 (binary) votes for a candidate. I would find a power of two (such as 2048 or 4096) more plausible, but still unlikely.

...all while leaving the other 512MB uncorrupted so that the software runs without crashing and is able to perform the rest of its duties.

Bullshit. There are better odds of our sun going supernova in the next 30 seconds and us being saved by Rocky & Bullwinkle flying backwards ala Superman to reverse time.

Re:BS!

[rrohbeck]

Simple answer: God dit it!
If He can create fake "evidence" about evolution to mislead us, He sure can also wiggle just the right bits with a zap. Including the CRC or checksum that was there (hopefully.)

With the right amount of disbelief in the scientific method and probabilities, anything is possible.

Not even remotely possible

[Yvanhoe]

An electric discharge, changing a single byte in memory, of a value of 1500 has simply no chance of happening.

At the extreme limit, rebooting, frying components *could* happen in an extremely badly designed machine. I think that the "experts" who state such a thing should be tried, either for incompetence or, more probably, for lies. I think that at this point, it is a legal offense.

Re:don't know about you guys...

[prjt]

No matter who wins people will still be disappointed and complain on how bad they are. At least that's the situation over here in Sweden.

I guess that's life when no of the candidates is really bad as they probably are in some other countries. It's harder to appreciate it when you take it for granted.

But then again all parties here has some type of corruption. They are all bad!