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Open Source Program Reveals Diebold Bug

Posted by timothy on from the rabble-rousin'-ne'er-do-well dept.

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.

8 of 175 comments (clear)

  1. First Post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  2. Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this? by sapphire+wyvern · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this? by shaitand · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this? by SleepingWaterBear · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  3. DIEBOLD: We vote so you don't have to ... by Rockin'Robert · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.)

  4. One area where open source will definitely win by Raleel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    -- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
    1. Re:One area where open source will definitely win by Hal_Porter · · Score: 5, Funny

      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!

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;