Open Source Program Reveals Diebold Bug

Mitch Trachtenberg writes "Ballot Browser, an open source Python program developed by Mitch Trachtenberg (yours truly) as part of the all-volunteer Humboldt County Election Transparency Project, was instrumental in revealing that Diebold counting software had dropped 197 ballots from Humboldt County, California's official election results. Despite a top-to-bottom review by the California Secretary of State's office, it appears that Diebold had not informed that office of the four-year-old bug. The Transparency Project has sites at humetp.org and http://www.humtp.com." Trachtenberg also points to his blog for the Transparency Project, and his own essay about the discovery and the process that led to it.

Comments

First Post

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, Trachtenberg do you have a sister? And was she somehow the key to all of this?

Re:First Post

[HAKdragon]

Oh cone on mods, that was funny. Haven't you guys ever heard of Harriet the Spy?

Re:First Post

[cathector]

on the off chance you're actually after an answer to the question in your .sig, the reason is that irregular forms such as -en simply die out when a generation of speakers rarely hears and uses the past-tense of a particular word, and so when it finally comes time for an individual to use the past-tense and they've never heard it, they just apply the regular rule of adding -ed. so a corollary would be that the past-tense of "prove" is being used less frequently than it was in previous times.

words and rules by steven pinker is an entire book about irregular verbs, and i believe has a sentence or two about proven/proved. he definitely has many paragraphs, possibly a chapter, on the -en / -ed deal. he also talks a bit about why irregular forms persist over time. he also has some serious pedantic axes to grind.

Re:First Post

[Anonymous Coward]

That wasn't a troll... it was pretty funny (no I'm not the same AC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Trachtenberg#Films (see specifically Harriet the Spy)

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm141333504/nm0005502

Re:First Post

[dgatwood]

Harriet the Spy? I assumed it was referring to her role as Dawn in the Buffy series, playing a character referred to throughout the entire fifth season only as "the key".

Re:First Post

[HAKdragon]

Thanks for the knowledge, even if you got modded "Off Topic". Considering I'm only 25, I find it kind of funny that you say a "generation of speakers". Maybe I'm just getting old before my time...damn kids! ;)

Re:First Post

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I'm pretty sure he was referring to Buffy, seeing as how her character - Dawn - was called "the key".

Re:First Post

[dgatwood]

Maybe that works in Linux---I haven't tried---but it is definitely neither portable nor POSIX-compliant. The POSIX spec for stty says nothing about it changing the O_NONBLOCK flag, so if an OS modifies that flag with stty raw or -raw, that is a bug. Writing software that depends on a broken behavior is generally a bad idea. Here's the spec for what stty is supposed to do:

stty POSIX spec

Furthermore, it is not even guaranteed that setting O_NONBLOCK in a child process will result in it getting changed in the parent process. If it could be guaranteed across all OSes, I would simply have set the flag once upon entering the app like I do for everything else. It does in Linux. In OSes derived from System-V (AT&T UNIX), however, AFAIK, this does not occur. In BSD OSes, this at least used to behave the way Linux does, though there has been some debate and I'm not sure if it still behaves that way or not. In fact, there are so many portability problems involved with using O_NOBLOCK or O_NDELAY that it almost isn't worth using. It certainly can't be used in anything remotely resembling a portable fashion without getting your hands dirty and writing some C code....

Yeah, it's ugly, but there's just not a viable alternative.

Re:First Post

[Anonymous Coward]

What you suggest doesn't work in any of the OSes you suggested, troll. Posting anonymously so as not to cause your abusive post, hate-filled response to be shown by people browsing at 1 or higher.

--dg

I'll see you in court

[Anonymous Coward]

Papers arriving shortly ...Esq.

Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[sapphire wyvern]

It's usually correct to not blame on malice what can be explained by incompetence. But I do find it hard to understand how a seemingly-simple requirement (essentially, count the number of times a button has been pressed) can be so badly botched by a company whose other "secure terminal" products (eg, ATMs) seem trustworthy and reliable, without the implication of a sinister motive.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[shaitand]

Someone with 30 minutes of quickbasic experience can write an application that accurately counts button presses.

The fact that we are being asked to swallow this is disgusting.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[eebra82]

It's usually correct to not blame on malice what can be explained by incompetence. But I do find it hard to understand how a seemingly-simple requirement (essentially, count the number of times a button has been pressed) can be so badly botched by a company whose other "secure terminal" products (eg, ATMs) seem trustworthy and reliable, without the implication of a sinister motive.

That's because money is heavily monitored and tracked wherever it goes. Votes are registered and received, but not monitored and traced on two ends.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[Benfea]

I am also a believer in Hanlon's Razor. In fact, I I'll stick with Hanlon on this one and disagree with you.

When the owner of Diebold boldly promised to "deliver" Ohio to the Republicans (was it in 2004?), I'm pretty sure he was talking about how easy his product is to hack, not about bugs in the software (intentional bugs or otherwise). There is strong circumstantial evidence that Diebold has been involved in intentionally changing the results of elections, but I don't think this particular counting mishap is further evidence of that; I think it's just shoddily-written software.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be a retard. No one with 30 minutes of Quickbasic experience can write an application scanning paper ballots and perform optical recognition on them with any degree of accuracy.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[theaveng]

If you read the article, they were Not pressing buttons. This was a paper-and-pen method followed by a scanning machine. The scanning machine was dropping ballots for some unknown reason.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[kvezach]

If anything is simple enough for formal verification to work, yet important enough that formal verification should be used, surely voting machines must be it. Of course, if they're really doing this out of a sinister motive, then (to them) there's no point.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[nabsltd]

The point is that the machine failed at identifying the ballots, not just identifying votes.

I can see that optical scanning might have issues, but then the counting machine needs to spit out the "bad" ballot into a different pile so that it can be manually checked. The machine failed to do this.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[Elder Lane Hour]

All the more reason not to trust even a full blown QA team with our votes.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[betterunixthanunix]

There are a few differences between ATMs and voting machines. First of all, ATMs are used daily, and if there was a bug in an ATM, it would be caught very quickly. Second of all, ATMs can be reflashed using the same connection that they use to contact the bank, so if a bug was found, it could be corrected very fast. Also, a bank has a HUGE financial incentive to test ATMs extensively before putting them in service, so it is unlikely that a bug would make it into the real world.

In general, it is hard to reflash a voting machine when a bug is found. The states' have laws about modifying those machines, and require that a long certification process take place after the modification (which is not to say that the certification process is in any way useful). The only incentive to check the machines for accuracy is idealism about the voting process, which is great in theory but not really shared by the majority of society.

I'm not defending the voting machine companies here. Malice is a stretch though; so is ignorance. I would blame it on tight schedules, poor internal engineering standards, and lack of initiative on the states' part to require useful certification. What probably happened was a small team was told to put their ATM project on hold for as short a period of time as possible to develop a voting machine, and their manager got uppity and tried to get them to finish even faster.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[Elder Lane Hour]

The fact that we are being asked to swallow this is disgusting.

The fact that we're being asked to swallow electronic voting is disgusting. Some things electronics simply don't do well, and one such thing is accountability. We should be demanding accountability. Not just in angry letters to congress-critters, but outside voting booths, to the people who mindlessly register their vote, without any real clue if their vote will count or not.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[the eric conspiracy]

The fact that we are being asked to swallow this is disgusting.

Thats what my ex used to say.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[SleepingWaterBear]

This is a bit of an overreaction. There's no reason that a properly designed electronic voting system can't achieve greater speed and accuracy while producing a paper trail which allows full accountability. Just have the machine produce a printout which the individual voter can verify, then in case of doubt you can always resort to a manual count. Ultimately electronic voting systems should save time and increase accuracy, and we're going to switch to them.

The problem here is that the politicians have no idea what a properly designed electronic voting system looks like, and so they just leave it all up to Diebold and the like, who have no real incentive to do things right. What we really need here is a detailed set of specifications for how voting machines ought to perform, and laws that prevent machines which don't meet those specifications from being used in an election.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[Darundal]

Yes, well, my vote counted! That is what the sticker I got after I voted said anyway (no joke).

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[TuaAmin13]

Yes, this looks ridiculous considering it's a voting machine, but to me it looks like a pretty normal software bug. I've seen far worse things get paste a full blown QA team.

It seems that's a fairly normal typo, and got past your preview pane

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[pbhj]

The solution is to build a system where you don't have to trust anything (or as little as possible), because it's fault tolerant and has verifiers in place to catch things.

And the problem with that is that it's supposed to be a secret ballot. I'd like to be able to use an online form with some sort of hash so that I could check my ballot had been recorded correctly. Such a system leaves others open to being pressured into voting in a particular way however.

You can't have a voter verified system that is also secret (unless you require those who want to secrete their vote to be active in hiding it). So, like you said you have to have some trust involved.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[MarkusQ]

I'd say of the two, secrecy is the less important requirement and if one of them has to be dropped, it should.

It comes down to a choice between:

• A system where votes can be stolen one at a time, with the individual voter's full knowledge and participation.
• A system where votes can be stolen wholesale, with the voters never knowing.

Which do you suppose would be harder to rig?

--MarkusQ

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[Anonymous Coward]

My user number is probably lower than yours.

Congratulations. You win the prize.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[db32]

Your right. They would say "that's a fucking stupid idea to scan ballots and use OCR to read them and then just rely on the machine when it promises that it got the answer right, at the very least we should be counting button presses".

Do you hold your ATM pin number up to the screen waiting for it to be scanned or do you punch the buttons...

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but someone with several years of python experience could do this in less than 30 minutes. Just type import ballot_counter Although in Py3K they've changed the name to ballotCounter, just so you know.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[AmberBlackCat]

Don't be a retard. No one with 30 minutes of Quickbasic experience can write an application scanning paper ballots and perform optical recognition on them with any degree of accuracy.

And the people who write ATM software didn't do any better.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[Anonymous Coward]

my thoughts exactly..

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[digitalunity]

Mine too. After the OCR machine acknowledged my ballot was readable, they gave me a sticker that said "I voted".

I asked him for a second one and walked around all next day with two "I voted" stickers on.

Surprisingly, nobody asked me if I voted twice.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[lysergic.acid]

really? so the ATM machine remembers the serial number on each bill it dispenses? they must use massive databases just to keep track of the millions of ATM withdrawals that are made each day, not to mention all the bills already in circulation (16,650,000 $1 bills are printed each day). seems like that would be a heck of a lot harder than tracking electronic ballots cast only once every 4 years.

votes don't need to be "traced" on two ends. you only need to authenticate (verify the identity of) each voter when they case their vote, and then securely transmit that vote to a central database of electronic ballots. a one SSN, one vote system would work if you just have each person select a password when they register to vote, so the job of identifying the voter is done long before the actual election day. then on the day of the election, everyone logs onto the official voting site (whether from home or using public internet access at a school or library) and inputs their social security number, d-o-b, and password for authentication. then they simply cast their vote and write down a confirmation number (or print out a receipt).

with the ballots being entirely electronic, they are immediately processed and added to a secure central database, at which point a second public ballot-tracking database will also be updated with the vote. so before the voter even leaves the voting booth (computer), they can confirm (using the confirmation number above) that their vote has been processed and properly recorded. if you are extremely paranoid, you can check your vote again from a different computer--heck, you can call up your friend in a different state and ask them to check from their computer.

basically, this gives each voter the prerogative to verify that their vote was recorded properly (and to catch any election fraud). the system can also double-check that the official ballot database perfectly matches the ballot-tracking database. if they don't match, then you know that there has been vote tampering, and you know exactly which ballots were tampered with.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[scribblej]

I program banking systems for a living.

It's cute that you think "electronics simply don't do [...] accountability." Believe me, I'd be out a job real fast if they didn't.

The bottom line is, this was handled really, really poorly.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[lysergic.acid]

what moron modded this comment a troll? is "-1 Troll" the default mod for "waaahhhh! reality doesn't agree with me!"?

if you disagree with the views expressed in a comment, the appropriate thing to do is to respond to it (and preferably refute it in mature/rational manner). modding someone down just for disagreeing with you is a sign of intellectual cowardice.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[whoever57]

The point is that the machine failed at identifying the ballots, not just identifying votes.

Not true. The machine counted the ballots and then later, the software deleted them along with any record that they ever existed.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[jonaskoelker]

I've seen far worse things get paste a full blown QA team.

Or a copy editor ;)

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[eebra82]

You're missing my entire point, which is that when you (for example) send money to someone, the documents of this transaction is on both ends (the sender and the receiver). Votes basically go one way.

The point is that there is room for voter frauds simply because of this. If it was a money transaction, it would never work simply because the documentation had to match on both ends.

Don't dig too deep into my comment, because I was only making an obvious point about why financial security systems are far more complex and secure than voting systems.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[mrmeval]

That's shit. I'll take the ballot I handle and allow it to be scanned. If the count is suspect then the ballots exist outside of some computer generated fantasy and real humans can count them.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Secrecy is a constitutional requirement in California.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[York the Mysterious]

This is really discomforting especially since I've voted in Humboldt County using those optical scanners. Makes me wonder if they ever counted my vote.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[Kent Recal]

Having a single corporation or institution count the votes is a problem in itself, no matter whether humans or machines read the actual ballots.

What I really want after I push the button is to immediately get my vote acknowledged by multiple independent (and competing) parties.
When both the democrat's and the republican counter has acknowledged my vote then I can be fairly sure that any tampering will be detected.

So how can this work? My idea would be cryptographic signing. Each vote gets a unique number that is sent to the counting parties over the internet. Their servers will register my vote and return a signed confirmation for that particular vote, which the physical voting machine can print on my receipt.

Then when I get home I just go to the website of each counting party, enter my signature (or its fingerprint) and re-check that my vote was *really* received by everyone.

Obviously there are still ways to tamper with this approach, e.g. by patching a diebold so that it re-prints receipts so that all democrat voters get the same receipt while only one vote is actually sent out to the counters. But IMHO it would make detection of such tricks much easier and the whole system much more transparent than what we have today.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[BryanClark]

(and preferably refute it in mature/rational manner).

You must be new here

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[HornWumpus]

Your union rep wants to see your voting receipt to make sure you voted 'correctly'!

If that doesn't scare you imagine the same scenario with your boss doing the verification.

You can't make the system 'voter auditable' without losing the secret ballot.

Take your idea but don't print the verification number on the ballot. Store it in the voting machine then reconcile the machine records to the central databases at the end of the day as a check. Hackers would have to change multiple systems in synch to get away with steeling votes.

Registration fraud still needs to be fixed.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[MarkusQ]

Secrecy is a constitutional requirement in California.

In some places, the right to own slaves was at one time too.

It's a matter of picking what's more important. Property rights or human rights? The right to privacy or the right to honest elections?

--MarkusQ

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[Anonymous Coward]

print 42

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[fishbowl]

>>The fact that we are being asked to swallow this is disgusting.

>Thats what my ex used to say.

So what changed his mind?

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[Kent Recal]

Well, yes, my proposed system is obviously not perfect, I just think it'd be a step into the right direction.
I'm not sure I buy into the union rep/boss scenario. That kind of opression would clearly be illegal and I doubt it could
be pulled off on a large scale without someone reporting that union rep/boss to the authorities.

Anyways, an interesting (but probably too complicated) variant could also be to combine the vote with a user-chosen pin and duress pin.
The counter-websites would only return the actual vote when the request contains a pin that the user chose at vote-time and that is
not printed on the receipt. A simple algorithm would be needed that lets the user alter the pin in a way so that the website reports
a vote for any other party. Thus, *every* entered pin would return a vote confirmation, but only the real pin reveals the real vote.

As said, this is probably too complicated for someone to grasp who could possibly get into the union rep situation (most likely
a low education person), but imho even this problem is theoretically solvable with a technical solution.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[fishbowl]

>really? so the ATM machine remembers the serial number on each bill it dispenses?

It can be arranged that way, if you control the order of the bills when they are loaded. And that's done under a strict protocol with armed security.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[Kent Recal]

PS: Thinking about it more, maybe not even *that* complicated after all.
The voting machine could indeed just display the list of PINs after the user is done voting.
"Pin 1234 for reps", "Pin 1235 for dems" etc.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[Anonymous Coward]

you DO know that if they can identify the ballot to the voter thats unconstitutional, right ?
and "they" includes any computer program with access to both databases.
voter privacy is MUCH more important than having a fraud free voting system. this is so that "they" cant hunt you down and kill you when the "they" turns into a fascist state.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[SleepingWaterBear]

That's shit. I'll take the ballot I handle and allow it to be scanned. If the count is suspect then the ballots exist outside of some computer generated fantasy and real humans can count them.

Well, that's why you have a printout which the voter verifies and essentially acts as your 'ballot'. Then you make sure that in the case of any remotely reasonable doubt you do a hand recount. I know I'm repeating myself, but your response suggests I wasn't clear enough.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[oasisbob]

There are a few differences between ATMs and voting machines. First of all, ATMs are used daily, and if there was a bug in an ATM, it would be caught very quickly.

If there's a bug in an ATM, it's caught quickly because there is a second set of accounting in place, not because ATMs are coded to some ridiculous higher standard.

For example, I've worked at a financial institution before. Some regular network maintenance interrupted the connection between our ATM network and our core host. A customer was using an ATM at the time, and made a deposit. Their receipt showed the deposit, but the funds never appeared in their account. Seems like a basic design problem -- the transaction mechanism between the ATM, the network, and the host (which clears the funds) is clearly not atomic.

Were this a voting machine and a mistake like this happened, who would really know? In the case of a bank and an ATM, the money and ledger balances are all accounted for, and mistakes are easily found because something won't balance.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[hexapodium]

In this case, though, privacy of ballots is essential to an honest election, to prevent more traditional electoral fraud like vote-buying. Votes have to be entirely anonymous once you leave the booth so that your employer/union leader/other Big Bad of the month can't pressurise you into voting one way or another. The right to an honest election hinges on a vote being one individual's opinion, not that of someone else with an angle to work. All you do by making votes voter-verifiable is move the point of fraud from the system to the individual, which is probably easier to execute.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[User0x45]

Close, but just to be clear.

> just have the machine produce a printout
> which the individual voter can verify,
> then in case of doubt you can always
> resort to a manual count.

The DRE interface is good to use in making selections in an election. A machine prints or punches or otherwise indicates the voters intent on a piece of paper (a paper ballot). The voter holds it, looks at it, and confirms it is a proper rendering of their vote. Then they take their paper ballot and walk away from the DRE. The DRE holds no more information than a stapler holds after having stapled documents together.

The piece of paper (ballot) is carried over somewhere else and is OCR'd, or manually counted, or whatever. The DRE isn't a part of counting votes. Only the paper ballots, verified by the voter, are sources for counting results. We can machine count the ballots, hand count, whatever.

DREs are great interface, and machines can print/punch out beautiful accurate paper ballots that are free from extraneous marks and outside the line marks etc. But once it is in the voters hand, and the voter looks and approves of it, the paper ballot is the only data source.

Not 'voter verified paper trail receipts' it must be 'voter verified paper ballots'.

--User0x45

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[User0x45]

> Votes are registered and received,
> but not monitored and traced on two ends.

That is a feature, not a bug. It is the Australian ballot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_ballot

--User0x45

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[aliquis]

Why use OCR when you have a fucking machine in the first place? Poorly implemented and retarded method in that case.

Unless you will let a human read all the papers anyway what do you need them for? And if you do, why do you want the machine in the first place?

if anything use buttons and let people "sign" on a touchscreen or something to show that they have accepted the selected option, though just asking if it's right or wrong with appropriate buttons should be enough.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[shaitand]

'The fact that we're being asked to swallow electronic voting is disgusting. Some things electronics simply don't do well, and one such thing is accountability.'

Paper and electronic systems are equally accountable. The solution is transparency and to combine the two. Count the votes electronically, in real time, on a large publically visible display with a serial number attached to the ballot. You watch your vote be added to the tally. Then you take the human readable, optically scannable printout, again with serial number on it and drop it into a seperate box that scans it and keeps a second tally.

You have no proof of your serial number to show someone who wants to buy your vote. Both tallies must match. You watch your vote counted publically and if counted wrong then can raise issue right there. It doesn't matter that you have no proof you are n576898 because there will be a discrepency in the database record for n576898 and the human readable printout. And the pollsters can watch from start to finish to assure that the number of voters matches the number of votes.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[Anonymous Coward]

mods this is supposed to be funny. please remember to exercise "+1 Pity"

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[shaitand]

Why would you scan paper ballots and perform optical recognition on them instead of counting electronic votes. Either way you are trusting the output of the electronic system. Why bother with a middle man that adds no accountability that saving human readable printouts doesn't give you and introduces complexity and errors?

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[shaitand]

'If you read the article, they were Not pressing buttons. This was a paper-and-pen method followed by a scanning machine.'

That is part of what is disgusting to swallow.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[hairyfeet]

I know this is weird, but I think the new machines we used this year in little small town AR finally got electronic voting right. I don't know who made them, but I doubt Diebold made anything that fool proof. It had a nice big, easy to read touchscreen and a big yes/no button by each candidate, which would then pop up a conformation box when you chose that said "You picked...is this your choice? If not please hit the blue cancel button". And finally when you confirmed a nice big, easy to read paper ballot was printed behind a clear glass slot next to the screen pointing up at you. This way you could simply look at the paper and see quite clearly it was putting down who/what you voted for. When you were finished voting the election volunteer used a small cartridge to collect the electronic vote and picked up your paper ballot and while the paper ballot was placed in a box in front of 3 officials the electronic one was set on the desk in front of the same until the next vote was cast.

I have to say that this year they really seemed to have everything down to a science. Everything was fast, smooth and orderly, and finally what I thought was a really nice touch was what they did when someone was in the wrong place. While I was in line 2 of the folks ahead of me had not been switched over from their previous voting district, but instead of making them drive across town and hope they were on the other polling district rolls an election official would simply ask them to wait aside for a few minutes while he called the polling district in question and had them switched over to the new district. Both of those that were in the wrong place got to vote with only a 10 minute delay. Very efficient, very orderly and polite. considering the messes we had had in 2000 and 2004 with junky machines I was quite impressed how quickly and smoothly everything ran. I just wish all my interaction with the government was so smooth.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[NotmyNick]

I program banking systems for a living.

It's cute that you think "electronics simply don't do [...] accountability." Believe me, I'd be out a job real fast if they didn't.

The bottom line is, this was handled really, really poorly

Or really, really well...

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[Anonymous Coward]

At this point, a properly designed electronic voting system is an electronic box that doesn't talk with anything else; it just spits out pretty paper ballots that people then put into a locked box.

Once we can get that right, we can let the electronic system provide a preliminary count. Once we get that right, the electronic count would be primary with the ballots being a secondary audit.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[laron]

That should be fairly easy to implement, as you would only need a slightly modified supermarket POS terminal.
- Press button, machine registers and counts the vote
- get paper slip (aka ballot)
- drop ballot in box

If you ask nicely, you are allowed to re-count the paper ballots if you suspect foul play.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[dryeo]

Pretty simple. Computer prints out your ballot. You verify that it is printed correctly. You deposit it in the ballot box. You watch the ballot box along with other interested parties. You watch the ballot boxes seal being broken and the count taking place. You have verified that your ballot along with all other ballots in the box has been counted. You also watch as ballot box is resealed for recount purposes.
You have a voter verified system with full anonymity.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[MarkusQ]

In this case, though, privacy of ballots is essential to an honest election, to prevent more traditional electoral fraud like vote-buying. Votes have to be entirely anonymous once you leave the booth so that your employer/union leader/other Big Bad of the month can't pressurise you into voting one way or another. The right to an honest election hinges on a vote being one individual's opinion, not that of someone else with an angle to work. All you do by making votes voter-verifiable is move the point of fraud from the system to the individual, which is probably easier to execute.

First off, privacy of the ballots isn't as essential to an honest election as fair tabulation. You can have an honest election without privacy, but you can't have one without fair tabulation. If the measures taken to ensure privacy prevent fair tabulation of the results, then it's too late to worry about the honesty of the election.

Second, there are many other things that impinge upon "a vote being one individual's opinion, not that of someone else with an angle to work;" if this is what concerns you than working for truth in campaign advertisements (including, say, strict penalties for knowingly making false statements in a campaign ad) would make more sense then fretting over ballot privacy.

Third, while privacy may be necessary to prevent the sort of effects you are worried about, it certainly isn't sufficient. There are already many other things that can be (and are) done, from purging voter rolls to scaring people away from the poles, that have the same effect. Ensuring privacy does not ensure that everyone gets to vote the way they wish.

Forth, while it may be easier to steal one or two ballots (without getting caught) by bullying voters, it's far harder to steal tens of thousands. If nothing else, it means that tens of thousands of people have to know what you're doing, if only so they can vote the way you want. Conversely, by tampering with the counting you could steal millions of votes without leaving a trace, and having only a handful of people in on the scam. If you're worried about fair outcomes, you should be far more worried about the election being stolen wholesale in the counting process than retail through voter intimidation.

--MarkusQ

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't settle for "in case of doubt you can always resort to a manual count".

Whose doubt?

I say just count paper ballots manually, with overseers from both/all sides present. I don't see how you could be certain otherwise.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[techno-vampire]

Maybe we should turn the design and implementation of an electronic voting system over to people like you, then. Whatever you come up with couldn't possibly be as bad as what Diebold seems to think is acceptable.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[lysergic.acid]

um, that's the whole point of the confirmation number...

only the voter knows which ballot was his/hers.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoever said their ATMs are trustworthy and reliable?

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[Alpha830RulZ]

A more fundamental difference between ATM's and voting machines is that in financial transactions, there is always a counterparty who cares about detecting and rectifying the mistake. If the ATM shorts you money, you know immediately, and are going to throw a fit with your bank. If the ATM gives you too much money, the totals aren't going to match and the bank is going to throw a fit tracking down the error.

The issue with secret ballots is that it's difficult to perform this sort of reconciliation to detect software errors or manipulation. I don't think it's impossible, but it's certainly a more difficult problem than the bank account case. As others have noted, if we gave up the requirement for complete secrecy of voting, this problem becomes easier to manage.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[pbhj]

If you're worried about fair outcomes, you should be far more worried about the election being stolen wholesale in the counting process than retail through voter intimidation.

--MarkusQ

You don't have to intimidate to get blocks of votes. The Imam at a large mosque can have a couple of thousand votes on request.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[pbhj]

You have a voter verified system with full anonymity.

Sorry I missed the bit where you verified your vote was counted and included in the total .. perhaps you can point it out to me? Or do you mean that each voter follows the box between polling station and counting centre and is able to count the papers for themselves?

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[enoz]

You can't make the system 'voter auditable' without losing the secret ballot.

Oh yes you can.

Punchscan has animations and pdfs explaining how it could work.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[Anonymous Coward]

We? That explains the ex part.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[SleepingWaterBear]

The simplest solution would be to allow any candidate in the running call for a manual recount no questions asked. Most races aren't anywhere near close enough that a candidate could reasonably ask for a recount without looking silly, and even if all the really tight races had to be manually counted it would probably be a big time saver.

Ultimately, the electronic count ought to be more accurate than a manual count, and a system of random manual audits should allow you to determine with a fair degree of certainty that the system is behaving as expected. Random manual audits could also make fraud very tricky.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[dryeo]

The polling place is the counting place. When the polls close ballots are counted by the election officials while being witnessed by any interested parties eg representatives of the main political parties and any citizens that wish to watch.
Anyways that's how it is done here, (Canada) minus the computer (ballots are simple) and I have a pretty high confidence that my vote is counted. There are still weaknesses in the system like the early votes and absentee votes, still there is usually no questions raised about the counting procedure.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[Annoying]

Or just, Really Poorly. If it had been done right, for better or worse, we wouldn't be having this discussion. If it worked right there wouldd be no debate, and if it were rigged right there would be no debate. The fact we have stories like this means it was done wrong for whatever end it is supposed to be.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the same GEMS that uses Access as a backend, is it not? Does this kind of thing really surprise anyone anymore?

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[MadKeithV]

Only on Slashdot could that be modded informative. The ex is a lie!

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[mrmeval]

The print out the user gets is X and the one the machine stores is whatever fantasy is needed along with the electronic tally.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[mrmeval]

They're printed on heat sensitive paper. So I'll leave all the drempulsocrats ballots somewhere hot but still in the sealed box. Yummy yum Chicago cooking.

One must ask why Diebold actively fought implementing a paper trail.

 

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[HungryHobo]

We use the union rep/boss examples because that's what used to happen.
Try the same scenario where it's the authorities you mention who want to tell you who to vote for.Just like in many many countries around the world.

Anon voting is fairly new and before that it wasn't uncommon for people to be killed/beaten for voting for the "wrong" party.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[clare-ents]

It happens in the UK with postal votes,

"There is obviously a terrible problem with intimidation. When I went to Yorkshire and the North West last June, I found people in vulnerable communities routinely forced to show their postal vote to bullies to prove who they voted for. This could be a frail girl who is physically intimidated, or a Pakistani man who speaks no English and has been ordered by his boss to vote Labour or be sacked."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article437746.ece?token=null&offset=12&page=2

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[fgouget]

Your EVoting proposal does not work because it fails on the following points (I'm pretty sure the list is not exhaustive):

• No coercion resistance
  Since you can prove how you voted, you could get fired/get your knees broken/etc for not voting 'right' (or refusing to prove how you voted).
• Voting from unsecure location
  Voting from home/the office exposes you to physical coercion from your relatives/coworkers/etc.
• Not anonymous
  You provide your SSN, date of birth and password to vote, allowing the system to tie them together. In fact the previous point _requires_ the system to tie them together.
• It is not transparent
  Only technical people can verify system works as advertised: for instance that the total actually corresponds to the ballots, or that the anonymity of your vote is preserved.
• Requires the voting place to be networked
  This leaves the voting stations and servers vulnerable to hacking. This allows many forms of attack, not necessarily to steal votes. One possible attack would simply be to disrupt voting in areas that are known to lean one way or the other.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[CowTipperGore]

The print out the user gets is X and the one the machine stores is whatever fantasy is needed along with the electronic tally.

The point you're missing and the GP is neglecting to say specifically is that your printed ballot would be dropped in a box and used for any needed manual recount. There also should be a requirement each election cycle that a random sample of ballots are audited. If the voter verifies that the paper ballot matches their on-screen selections before dropping it in the box, the only issue I see is that the software could keep a list of ballots changed and present the auditor with the original version instead of what was used for tabulation. Of course, this could be worked around with good enough auditing requirements, or more simply, with open source requirements.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[alanhunt]

It doesn't need to simply be a matter of intimidation if you lose the secret ballot... what about someone organizing lots of voters short on cash and promising twenty bucks if you can show an official "I voted for candidate X" slip? A paper trail also opens up the possibility of vote buying.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[scribblej]

I would have said the same thing to the person you are replying to, but since you did, let me play devil's advocate and say you're only right if the intent was to either facilitate voting, or subvert the system directly. If the goal was to destroy faith in the system, this is a pretty good job.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[scribblej]

Aw shucks, I'm blushing! Seriously, though, I'd imagine I could design a system a lot better than this. I'd also have really wished that Diebold's systems would be better than anything I could do.

But for the record, "people like me" and "Diebold" do share a certain intersection, in my opinion (which isn't me; I'm not a Diebold employee). They do design some banking systems, for instance, I know they do ATMs. I've only done one project myself that interacts with the ATM networks, so I'd say someone /did/ turn the design and implementation over to 'people like me.' Well, 'people like me, only retarded.'

Which describes most of the banking industry, honestly I'm surprised we don't hear about more problems like this with ATMs, from Diebold and others.

Ok, 'people like me, only /more/ retarded' then.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I voted on an elctronic machine. It printed out all my choices, then asked me to confirm they were correct. When I went to confirm, the screen went all read with an error message.

I wasn't sure that it ever printed out whatever was required to make my ballot official. The inked confirmation. It just scrolled the paper off the "screen" for the next vote to begin.

I called over the election official, who noted the red screen. He shrugged his sholders, then pushed some button on the back of the machine to eject my smart card, and reboot the machine. The machine wouldn't accept the card back, stating it had already been used. The official claimed this was proof that my vote had been successful.

I didn't accept this and demanded proof that my vote had actually been recorded. Of course the official was unable to provide that proof, even with a paper trail inside the machine. There was no way any election official was going to crack open the paper roll and show me the last ballot printed on it. It makes sense that they would not compromise the entire roll in this way.

They phoned the county registrar, who agreed that my vote could not be guaranteed. Naturally, I could not be allowed to vote again if I had already voted. There was no way to invalidate the vote if it had somehow been good. So, I had to just leave without anyone knowing if I had voted or not.

The paper trail inside the machine did not protect my franchise. No recount after the fact will protect my franchise either.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[MarkusQ]

You don't have to intimidate to get blocks of votes. The Imam at a large mosque can have a couple of thousand votes on request.

Ditto the guy who claims to speak for the appropriate god(s) at any large church.

But that has nothing to do with ballot privacy--the guy who hears voices just tells the sheep what to do and trust that they'll do it out of superstitious love/dread/sheepiness. Having them bring in proof really weakens the all-seeing powerful spirit in the sky shtick, so it isn't going to be worth the few extra votes it might bring in.

--MarkusQ

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[pbhj]

There is a key difference in Islam in the Imam's are the ultimate authority (or perhaps you could weasel it and say their interpretation of the Koran and Haddith is the ultimate?) whilst in a Christian church the ultimate authority is the word of God, especially as expressed in the Bible. Christianity is about personal faith, Islam is about a whole system for living.

Thus Islam is a political system too, whilst Christianity is not.

I think Judaism leans more towards the Islamic side with the rabbinic tradition.

On a side note I'm interested to know which "church" you are referring to that believes in multiple gods? Hindus for example use a temple. Church is a specifically Christian word as it's etymology is of greek words for a "congregation of the Lord".

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[MarkusQ]

There is a key difference in Islam in the Imam's are the ultimate authority (or perhaps you could weasel it and say their interpretation of the Koran and Haddith is the ultimate?) whilst in a Christian church the ultimate authority is the word of God, especially as expressed in the Bible. Christianity is about personal faith, Islam is about a whole system for living.

While it may seem like a key difference to someone who believes, it really isn't a difference at all in an objective sense.

Two guys walk up to you. One says "This other fellow and I both have imaginary friends. But there's a key difference. He claims to be the ultimate authority on what his imaginary friend says, and if you don't like it, tough. Whilst take my imaginary friend as the ultimate authority, and don't try to push my interpretation of His Word."

See what I mean?

Thus Islam is a political system too, whilst Christianity is not.

Read much history?

On a side note I'm interested to know which "church" you are referring to that believes in multiple gods? Hindus for example use a temple. Church is a specifically Christian word as it's etymology is of greek words for a "congregation of the Lord".

Well, if Catholics counted the way most people do they'd have three (or four, if you count Mary).

That was sarcasm, in case you missed it.

I'll grant you that the word "church" in modern American usage generally refers to something that at least calls itself Christian, but they don't own the word. In fact their own bible uses the word to refer to what you're calling a temple. Note that, as the linked page points out, this is "God's Word - the Truth; the Bible without any altering..." so they'd surely accept that the word "church" could be used as I've used it.

--MarkusQ

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[Anonymous Coward]

your ATM pin number

"PIN" (all upper-case). Also, "PIN number" is repetitiously redundant, as the "N"in "PIN" stands for "number" (so "PIN number" translates to "Personal Identification Number number").

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[pbhj]

While it may seem like a key difference to someone who believes, it really isn't a difference at all in an objective sense.

Two guys walk up to you. One says "This other fellow and I both have imaginary friends. But there's a key difference. He claims to be the ultimate authority on what his imaginary friend says, and if you don't like it, tough. Whilst take my imaginary friend as the ultimate authority, and don't try to push my interpretation of His Word."

See what I mean?

I'm afraid I don't at all. Let's lay aside question of theism for a moment. Islam demands a specific political system and hence in order to approach that system Islamic leaders will rightly specify who best to vote for to achieve this end. Islam doesn't generally have a notion of personal relationship with God.

Christianity is a personal faith which makes no demands as to the political system under which it's adherents live.

The difference is clearly seen in the key figures in each movement. Mohammed came and battled physically against towns to enforce his regime. Jesus refused his disciples to physically battle even against the soldiers who came to take him to be tortured and killed.

[...] the Bible without any altering..." so they'd surely accept that the word "church" could be used as I've used it.

It wasn't a trick question, I was interested in how you were using it, not how it may be used. The passage you quote is from The Bible, the KJV is just a not very precise translation in anachronistic language. The Greek word is "hierosylos" (Acts 19:37) derived from Temple + Strip, ie it means temple robbers or in a widened sense those guilty of sacrilege. The term "church" had no meaning at the time of Acts - congregation is closer to the truth in that the Christians in a town would meet in one anothers houses to worship and share together.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[MarkusQ]

Islam demands a specific political system and hence in order to approach that system Islamic leaders will rightly specify who best to vote for to achieve this end. Islam doesn't generally have a notion of personal relationship with God.

Christianity is a personal faith which makes no demands as to the political system under which it's adherents live.

Again, I'm sure it seems like a big difference to the people who believe in that sort of stuff, and probably to scientists who study them, but from an external perspective there's really no operational difference.

One guy has a personal relationship with his imaginary friend, while the other has a mediated relationship with his. From the point of view of a casual bystander they're both just guys with imaginary friends.

In one case you have the heads of the church telling you who to vote for because it's part of the religion, while his opposite number is telling you who to vote for 'cause it's god will. Again, from the outside it looks about the same.

And on and on. You're walking down the street and suddenly you get blown up because some nut-case decided the building you were passing was evil, it doesn't really matter to you if it was a islamic nut-case blowing up a girls school or a christian nut-case blowing up a doctor's office. And unless your family and friends are nut-cases of one flavor or another it isn't going to matter to them either.

I can see that it matters a lot to christians and muslims, or shia and suni, or protestants and catholics, and all, just as treckies get very worked up about which episode they used which type of doodad, but unless you buy into the whole belife system it rally doesn't make that much difference.

[...] the Bible without any altering..." so they'd surely accept that the word "church" could be used as I've used it.

It wasn't a trick question, I was interested in how you were using it, not how it may be used.

It wasn't a trick answer, so we're even. I was using it as it was being used in the reference I cited and elsewhere: to refer to a group of people who gather together worship their shared imaginary friend(s).

--MarkusQ

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[feder]

Do you need a paper trail for your ATM transactions?

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because third parties like the organization which discovered this bug need to have a way to audit the system?

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[shaitand]

'Because third parties like the organization which discovered this bug need to have a way to audit the system'

From my original post 'that saving human readable printouts doesn't give you'

An optical scanner only introduces additional errors into the process.

Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this?

[db32]

Don't even get me started on that piece of this disaster! How is it that I can withdraw $20 from an ATM and have all of the bank and ATM fees properly calculated and withdrawn accurately each and every time. Then I get a reciept telling me accurate numbers for how much I withdrew, how much is in my account and so on. You let me know when I can use OCR to scan in a deposit/withdrawl slip at an ATM and have it do anything.

However, with a voting machine I can't count on it to do a simple vote votal +1 operation correctly nor do I get a receipt verifying that it counted my vote correctly.

Clearly, the companies are not to blame for this. I place the blame squarely on math. It would seem that subtraction is fundamentally more accurate than addition. Clearly this is why ATM deposit slips are picked up and manually verified, however, you can subtract money from your account with a quick card swipe and button punch.

DIEBOLD: We vote so you don't have to ...

[Rockin'Robert]

Stalin told us: "It's not who votes. It's who counts the votes," but we NEVER listen to anybody - huh? (Not that I am a fan.)

One area where open source will definitely win

[Raleel]

In testing. You need to be able to verify the testing mechanism. Open Source will win there because of the ability to view and modify the code. Just verify that you are testing with the same stuff that you reviewed.

Re:One area where open source will definitely win

[Hal_Porter]

In testing. You need to be able to verify the testing mechanism. Open Source will win there because of the ability to view and modify the code. Just verify that you are testing with the same stuff that you reviewed.

Live Free or Diebold!

Re:One area where open source will definitely win

[stewbacca]

*doesn't make sense in German.... Live free or "deebold"?*

Re:One area where open source will definitely win

[iammani]

In testing.

You mean testing of open source products, right

Re:One area where open source will definitely win

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you guys really need an '-e' switch? C'mon..

Re:One area where open source will definitely win

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Jesus Christ! Thank fuck it wasn't in German then.

Re:One area where open source will definitely win

[dissy]

In testing. You need to be able to verify the testing mechanism. Open Source will win there because of the ability to view and modify the code. Just verify that you are testing with the same stuff that you reviewed.

While normally you would be correct, open source will only 'win' in the testing department if the goal in the first place was to have functional software that works (as close as possible) to how it claims to work.
Can you honestly with a straight face say that was Diebolds want/desire at any point during this e-voting scam?

Re:One area where open source will definitely win

[Anonymous Coward]

Just verify that you are testing with the same stuff that you reviewed.

Huh? How do you know that the binaries in the machines came from the source you are testing? There is always this question regardless as to whether or not the source is open. As soon as you resign yourself to testing the binary on the actual platform (in this case a voting machine) you are basically blind to the source. And you are kidding yourself if you test it anywhere else.

Seriously, this whole fiction about OSS being more trustworthy or reliable or bug-free than closed source is nonsense. 99+% of us download prebuilt binaries. We don't really know what source the binary was built from. Every OSS application I have ever tried is riddled with (serious) bugs -- and I have tried the big names like Open Office, VNC (beware of this one), Virtual Box, Firefox, etc. Mind you, I am not saying they are worse than closed source ... but they are most certainly not any better. All are created by human beings, who are fallible.

Re:One area where open source will definitely win

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? How do you know that the binaries in the machines came from the source you are testing?

Compile and diff.

Re:One area where open source will definitely win

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if you have exactly the same revision compiler, and libraries. Even then I don't think the binaries will match. I know that is the case with Visual C++ compiler; the binaries never match even when you recompile the same EXE on the same machine with the same compiler. I don't know if this is the case with gcc, though on a multicore CPU I would bet that it is (modules get compiled in parallel in separate threads on separate CPUs so the scheduler somewhat randomizes the compilation order).

Re:One area where open source will definitely win

[Toll_Free]

Oh bullshit.

Q & A doesn't exist anywhere else?

You're argument is elementary and full of crap.

Sorry, but THAT'S the truth.

--Toll_Free

Re:One area where open source will definitely win

[Onymous Coward]

Let's help to make it happen.

64,161 votes with 197 errors

[zoomshorts]

Sounds like they used humans to count the vote in reality.

A very small percentage. Still a concern.

Re:64,161 votes with 197 errors

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't say "still" "a" "concern". *Any* percentage can shift the outcome of an election, and each single vote counts. And it's not a concern. This gotta be fixed one way or the other and possibly cleared up in detail. How something like this could happen at all, who would be to blame and should (be forced to) take responsibility.

Re:64,161 votes with 197 errors

[iammani]

A very small percentage.

... Assuming that there were no further bugs.

Re:64,161 votes with 197 errors

[pbhj]

*Any* percentage can shift the outcome of an election, and each single vote counts.

Each single vote _may_ count, you don't know until after it has been cast though. If who I vote for wins by an easy landslide majority then you can hardly say my vote counted.

If the margin between outcomes is within n-times the expected counting error then recounts are usually made (in places that value their democracy). If the expected error is +/-200 and the outcome is a win by a 10 000 then it ain't worth counting it again.

Re:64,161 votes with 197 errors

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, but as demonstrated vividly with FL-Pres in 2000 and MN-Sen in 2008 (which by some projections may come down to a difference of three -- count em, three -- votes), you have to assume the worst case scenario of just a handful of votes determining the winner. If your system cannot handle this scenario, it's fundamentally broken.

Re:64,161 votes with 197 errors

[digitalunity]

Exactly. In a lot of places, jerrymandering has made individual votes less important because the winners often win by a large margin. This is true for both major parties.

However, for statewide elections as evidenced in Minnesota recently, individual votes can have a HUGE impact. A +/- 200 error isn't good enough when the winner's margin is only 100 votes.

Re:64,161 votes with 197 errors

[Von Helmet]

So if humans are as accurate, why are you (I'm in the UK) using electronic counters?

Start by informing everyone you know.

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't need this garbage determining public offices. We have to start educating people that don't understand otherwise that these are a bad idea. Don't be condescending or anything like that, just start discussing with your friends and family that these are a bad idea and why they are a bad idea. Might help if you keep articles like this handy.

Re:Start by informing everyone you know.

[LingNoi]

I believe that electronic devices could do a much better job however they're doing this ass backwards with closed source software and one company.

Slashdot's polling software is more useful.

Re:Start by informing everyone you know.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, fuck-face, that wasn't the point. The point was to inform people about electronic voting. I'll be sure to inform everybody about how bad of an idea it is to read your idiotic dribble.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Oh noes!!

[smittyoneeach]

Ah, but Al Franken will not be so easily struck down!

Mitch Trachtenberg

[Anonymous Coward]

Any relation to Michelle Trachtenberg (Dawn from Buffy the Vampire Slayer)?

Kudo's

[stabiesoft]

To this guy who took it upon himself to provide this check, and kudo's to the supervisor who made it possible. The idea of providing DVD image scans so anyone can verify the vote is genius. I hope other counties start providing real verification like this.

What was the bug?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've read a few pieces on this including the author's essay. I still dont know what the actual bug is? Did I miss it somewhere? Is the bug that it just drops every 50th batch that is scanned? :>

Simple Election Algorithum

[Anonymous Coward]

Step 1) Did the Democrat win?
No -  Step 2) Recount!
      Step 3) goto Step 1
Yes - Step 2) "The people have spoken!"

 

Hey Mitch

[danwesnor]

Hey, Mitch, your sister's hot, have her call me, mkay?

What bothers me more

[WindBourne]

is not that companies like Diebold would be corrupt. It is that BOTH dems and pubs have pushed NOT to have a paper trail. Basically, they claim to have our best interest at heart, and yet, we have the likes of Cheney, Rove, Libbey, Delay, Hastart, Stevens, Jefferson, Blogovitch, Daley (certainly original ) , possibly Jackson Jr, etc, etc, etc. Even now, some dems are pushing for NO punishment for Stevens and others are saying no investigations into all of W's admin hijinks. Makes you wonder who these ppl are really representing.

Re:What bothers me more

[jlarocco]

This just in: People look out for their best interests - always. In other news the sky is blue...

Re:What bothers me more

[WindBourne]

Public servants CAN have all's best interest at heart. There are many. I would argue that most state politicians and most civil servants do in fact have just that. Feds are a different matter. They tend towards corruption. This is true everywhere. Heck, just look at EU. Watching the copyright/patent issues being pushed there. Many citizens object to America's INSANE IP policies, and their citizens are fighting them. But their federal politicians and employees are split. A number of their tactics have suggested that the changes have occured after at least 1 major company came in and pushed for software patents and copyrights. That was total corruption (just like here).

Re:What bothers me more

[jlarocco]

Public servants CAN have all's best interest at heart. There are many. I would argue that most state politicians and most civil servants do in fact have just that. Feds are a different matter. They tend towards corruption.

That's so naive I almost feel sorry for you.

Oh, and get a clue. There's a difference between doing what's in your best interest and being corrupt.

Re:What bothers me more

[Anonymous Coward]

I would argue that most state politicians and most civil servants do in fact have [all's best interest at heart].

I work for a political consulting company. Ninety percent of our clients are state politicians. I can say, with certainty, that you would lose that argument.

Re:What bothers me more

[Bacon Bits]

They're representing the people who got them elected: lobbyists and large campaign contributors.

Re:What bothers me more

[phantomfive]

Public servants CAN have all's best interest at heart. There are many. I would argue that most state politicians....do in fact have just that.

Wow. You clearly do not live in California. Perhaps the only state with a state government more corrupt is Illinois. Hopefully in other places it is better, but here the legislature has gerrymandered the voting boundaries so much that it is rare for them to be voted out of office, and corruption is rampant.

Re:What bothers me more

[WindBourne]

And that is the problem. Those entities did NOT get them elected. The voters did.

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[account_deleted]

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Error not a problem

[S-100]

Error itself is not a problem in a general election. This assumes that the error is uniformly distributed, which would not generate a meaningful change in the percentage results.

Of course, this is rarely the case since the "error generators" tend to be localized, which may bias the error towards a particular side or candidate. Proof are the "found" ballots in the Minnesota race, which mysteriously (and statistically impossibly) favor a particular candidate.

Re:Error not a problem

[cathector]

Proof are the "found" ballots in the Minnesota race, which mysteriously (and statistically impossibly) favor a particular candidate.

you probably mean "which significantly differ from the rest of the ballots".

why Open Source works ..

[rs232]

"SANE didn't work with the serial number imprinter on our Fujitsu scanner, so I contacted [the] "maintainer" of the SANE Fujitsu backend. He was incredible, getting us some initial changes the same day"

This is what amazes me about Open Source, if you have a problem, you can contact the developers directly, instead of 'Dave' in some call center in Bangalore ..

error is a big a problem in a general election ..

[rs232]

"Error itself is not a problem in a general election. This assumes that the error is uniformly distributed, which would not generate a meaningful change in the percentage results"

Total nonsence, error is a big a problem in an election, as you can't make any assumptions, as you don't know what the software is doing and finally discarding votes in an election is illegal ..

on my planet 1 + 1 = 2 or maybe sometimes 1.9 or maybe 2.01

1100 0101 1100 0101 1100 0101 1100 0101 1100 0101 1100 0101

Again: Not a surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Just on the face of it...OpenSource revealing a bug in Diebold's gear...isn't that redundant?

If OpenSource comes to a project, it wasn't OpenSourced before. Meaning (these days) it was Windows.

Have we not all been taught that every Windows bug is sanctioned by Redmond, deemed 'what the customer wants' and is forgivable for the next purchase of a computer?

(OK, drawing it to an extreme...)

Closed source makes it hard to spot errors: so few eyes on the code. It limits the input too, from other authors which make it interesting and vibrant.

Diebold the last I looked still relied on Windows for an ATM (mission-critical job) so how is this a surprise?

a pretty normal software bug .. :)

[rs232]

"it looks like a pretty normal software bug"

maybe on your planet the ability to count up in single integer increments is considered too esoteric for the average QA team, but here it's something the average IT student can manage ..

Re:a pretty normal software bug .. :)

[Anonymous Coward]

His point stands. Even an IT student should be able to realize that if the software includes the ability to delete things, you need to test it.

Re:a pretty normal software bug .. :)

[JNighthawk]

I'm glad that you responded to a post by saying something that had absolutely nothing to do with the post... and you were modded up.

Quit trolling.

Re:a pretty normal software bug .. :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahaha... you've obviously never had to deal with a QA department. If it's not on the list of things to test that you provide, they don't fucking test it.

why not have dual voting programs?

[kingduct]

I have read over and over about unreliable software counting votes. Why not have each vote be counted by two programs? It seems like it would be fairly trivial to have them share the same interface, but the actual methods of counting votes and securing themselves would be completely independent. They would be written by two sources (whether free or not) and then could be used to test each other (in addition of course to humans counting the paper trail the two would print out).

Re:why not have dual voting programs?

[SupremoMan]

I'm just gonna go out on the limb and say it would cost double the money. I'm not saying it wouldn't be money well spent, or otherwise it's a bad idea, I'm just saying this is the reason you will be given.

Re:why not have dual voting programs?

[Melibeus]

Even better, Have three vote counting programs. Then a majority vote between the three as to what the result really should be. For the little bit of software that counts the three votes from the voting programs, make three copies of that and it's turtles all the way down...

Re:why not have dual voting programs?

[Legion303]

"Even better, Have three vote counting programs."

Just like Saberhagen's Berserkers. Come for the voting, stay for the mechanized massacre.

Re:why not have dual voting programs?

[shis-ka-bob]

A cost 'doubling' of the software and the CPU cycles in a system like this would add only a tiny fraction to the final cost.

you are talking rubbish ..

[rs232]

"There are a few differences between ATMs and voting machines. First of all, ATMs are used daily, and if there was a bug in an ATM, it would be caught very quickly. Second of all, ATMs can be reflashed using the same connection that they use to contact the bank"

Firstly, voting machines should be subject to a full stress test before being deployed in a live election. Secondly ATMs can not be remotely 'reflashed', To upgrade required the replacement of the ATM module and the use of an external hand-held unit (plugged into the ATM) and the presence of two bank officials and the use of two unique PINS.

197 votes out of a single precent ..

[rs232]

"Sounds like they used humans to count the vote in reality. A very small percentage. Still a concern"

No, not 197 out of 64,161, but 197 votes out of a single precinct, and unknown numbers of others as they were never checked.

"Crnich said she was told that the software begins counting decks of ballots at zero, and that sometimes when a deck is deleted from the machine due to normal complications, the software also deletes the Deck Zero, which in this case was the vote-by-mail ballots from Precinct 1E-45"

...Algorithum ?

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be a Republican.

That proves little.

[HornWumpus]

One assumption could be that the counters in the most left leaning districts were hiding Franken votes during the initial count.

The other assumption could be that the counters in the most left leaning districts are creating new ballots in response to the number of ballots they need (like they did four years ago in Washington state).

No good chain of custody for the ballots and they should not be counted under any circumstances. Guaranteed they are fraudulent.

Are you sure your vote counted?

[whoever57]

Mine too. After the OCR machine acknowledged my ballot was readable, they gave me a sticker that said "I voted".

It may well have been readable, but the first articles I saw on this make it clear that being readable is not a guarantee of your vote actually being included in the result.

The first articles make it clear that votes were counted and then, in some circumstances, From that article:

The ballots even showed up in preliminary tallies counted on election night on November 4 and in a report printed out on November 23. But some time after this point, the tabulation software inexplicably deleted the ballots without election officials ever knowing.

Still sure your vote counted?

Testing is not enough

[wfstanle]

In any software that is VERY important, "One doesn't test, one proves". When a test succeeds, you have demonstrated that you have found a bug. When testing fails (no bugs were found), you have not indicated that bugs do not exist. More tests only raise our confidence that the software is good. As one of my professors says, "There always is one more bug"

Obligatory xkcd

[Anthony_Cargile]

http://www.xkcd.com/493/. Since your personal hero is apparently our current president, however, I'm not going to predict when he's going to die. But the last surviving member of That 70's Show bites the dust in 2049, however :D.

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[account_deleted]

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short-changed in Haggen's self-checkout lane

[ReedYoung]

I didn't think to check until I was in the parking lot, but the coin dispenser definitely spit out three pennies when it owed me four. Admittedly, I normally leave my pennies, or throw them in the parking lot if given to me by a human, but in this case the discrepancy stood out like a sore thumb. My total bill was $x.21 and I paid an integer number of dollars so obviously I was owed $0.79 worth of coins, and after I took my three quarters (better than pennies in that they're occasionally useful for parking, at least) the wrong number of pennies was conspicuous enough that I did a double-take. Sure enough, three coppers where there should have been four. True story.

Also, a common argument against using open source software in "Fortune 1000" and lesser-numbered corporatist Ponzi schemes, and in favor of using proprietary software, especially Microsoft software and Windows-only compatible software by any house, is the "need for a neck to wring" if ^B^B when something goes wrong. The identical argument, applied to voting, obviously favors paper ballots and human counters over any and all automation schemes and devices.

Mistake, OK. Cover-up, not OK

[aug24]

I have no issue with a bug making its way through to production.

I have an enormous issue with Diebold knowing about it for four years and not recalling their machines and finding a fix.

Criminal charges, surely?

Justin.

Trouble in River City

[Anonymous Coward]

Seemingly unnoticed in this story is the huge breach being perpetrated by our "heroes."

The python program in question is part of a Transparency project to watchdog the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). They provide an independent scanner to scan the same ballots, and achieve an independent tally. Sound great. Two different algorithms on separate hardware to double-check each other.

In this case, the open source solutions seems to be more accurate than the proprietary solution. Great.

But then for the rest of the story. The Transparency project then posts all the scanned ballot images online. Then anyone who cares, can feed them into their own scanning mechanism and tally them for a triple- or quadruple-check, etc. Anyone who wants to can do their own studies on all the ballots.

Pretty cool, eh?

Plus, I can draw that little symbol in the upper right hand corner of my ballot that will allow my employer to recognize my ballot and confirm that I earned my election day bonus by voting the right way.

So the Transparency project makes a step forward for democracy, then kindly steps out of the way of those of us whose livelihood depends on our vote.

Not by choice

[Anonymous Coward]

He is just an uneducated hillbilly who believes the hype!

Possible support for this apocryphal quote

[Randym]

Stalin told us: "It's not who votes. It's who counts the votes,"

Long thought to be an urban myth, someone has discovered an intriguing possible reference:
Dear Reader (updated):
I'm in the process of revising my comments below, but in the meantime am pleased to inform you that a source has been found for a variant of this quote -- Boris Bazhanov's Memoirs of Stalin's Former Secretary (published in 1992 and only available in Russian, so far as I know).
The passage in question, which appears near the end of chapter five, reads (loosely translated) as follows:
"You know, comrades," says Stalin, "that I think in regard to this: I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this â"- who will count the votes, and how."

Heref: http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/dubiousquotes/a/stalin_quote.htm /