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

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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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.

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.

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 ..

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?