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Diebold Admits Flaw In Voting Software
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "At a public hearing in California, Diebold's western region manager has admitted that the audit log system on current versions of Premier Election Solutions' (formerly Diebold's) electronic voting and tabulating systems — used in some 34 states across the nation — fails to record the wholesale deletion of ballots, even when ballots are deleted on the same day as an election. An election system's audit logs are meant to record all activity during the system's actual counting of ballots, so that later examiners may determine, with certainty, whether any fraudulent or mistaken activity had occurred during the count. Diebold's software fails to do that, as has recently been discovered by Election Integrity advocates in Humboldt County, CA, and then confirmed by the CA Secretary of State. The flaws, built into the system for more than a decade, are in serious violation of federal voting system certification standards."
The flaws, built into the system for more than a decade, are in serious violation of federal voting system certification standards.
Sure, you and I care, but who's the them that's going to DO anything?
Besides the obvious "toss them out on their arse", I'd like to see them heavily fined. And I mean like "we want a refund"
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
These flaws have been reported in many mainstream press outlets, investigated by a half-dozen independent groups, and yet it was still cleared for use in state, county, and federal elections. Let's ignore Diebold for a minute -- I know plenty of other people here will (rightfully) hang them. This points to a major systemic flaw in our certification programs for voting machines. Period. End of discussion.
This isn't just Diebold. This is dozens of state, local, and federal agencies that abjectly failed in their duties to their constituents to protect the voting system. This is huge. Epic. I cannot stress enough the damage this has caused to the confidence in the system. Again, let's ignore Diebold and ask the really hard question -- Where do we go from here? Can e-voting systems be trusted? What changes need to be made to the system (and they better be major)? What do we do to restore voter confidence in a system that just got skinned, gutted, and mounted?
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
...every election that these machines have been used for in each of those 34 states. If the machines should not have passed certification, and yet they were certified (were they?) then the agency doing the certification ought to be brought up on charges as well, and any OTHER systems that they certified ought to be open to question as well. This could get you dizzy.
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Read my political short stories at http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/
when they lose the election.
Dual Opteron < $600
Up until the last election it seems that most Americans thought the election for American Idol was more important. I hope that the last election marked a change in this attitude. It'd be nice if we could avoid electing another idiot to high office... Aaah who am I kidding?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
We can all agree that punch cards are terrible, but there are other alternatives which are secure and accountable. Scantron ballots are used in Texas, and there's always a paper ballot trail of the actual vote in case of a ballot contest. I'm no Luddite, but I've never understood this rush to replace technology that works with the next big thing just because it's the next big thing.
Make love, not reality television.
I don't understand how this companies electronic ballot boxes can be tolerated. Given the history of Diebold stories this announce doesn't surprise me. I'm sure there are plenty of other folks who aren't surprised. I'm damn near certain if there was public access to the code operating these machines then the faults would have been determined much earlier. Surely something is horribly horribly wrong here.
Does this acknowledgement mean that Diebold machines will be retired from service immediately? And, more importantly does it mean that the process which allowed these Diebold machines to be used in the first place will be reviewed?
Perhaps it will mean that the concept of using a machine where most voters don't understand it's workings will be viewed as unacceptable. I doubt it.
Democracy has become a bad parody of itself.
Rant ends.
I'm a Humboldt County resident (where these machines were investigated). The machines with the flaw are the scantron-style voting machines that are built by Diebold. My understanding is that the flaw isn't in the vote collection, it's in the vote tabulation.
I agree with you though that it's nice that at least there is a paper trail to follow unlike with touchscreen voting.
It's funny, now that Bush is out of office it seems like all the old cronies that got him in there in the first place are practically tripping over themselves to admit their guilt all of a sudden.
I know the whole don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to ignorance thing. But Diebold is an ATM maker, I find it hard to believe that they were this ignorant. I would think that an ATM would be a more complex device than a voting machine.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
I used to work as a "Computer Audit Analyst" for the Florida Division of Elections, certifying voting systems for use in the State of Florida. Certification for Premier/Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia was pretty much a given, no matter the fact that their systems are complete shit and the certification process is a joke. Scan a few thousand ballots, have an independent testing lab review your source code, and you're good to go. Google "sequoia yellow button" to see what I mean.
Not to mention the attitudes of the folks who work there. They call people like me "activists" with a sour tone of voice, grudgingly fill public records requests, and the newly-built [2006] voting-systems lab was the size of a damn closet. Think the types of people who think F/OSS is so high-school students have something to tinker with.
Sadly, most American voters don't even think about the voting backend, and are wholly uninterested in the fact that three corporations have a legally-enforced triopoly in voting equipment, sell overpriced shit to the counties, and take legal action against anyone who finds security flaws in their systems.
I realize no one method is going to be perfect for everyone, but Scantron is very bad for people like my father, who has crippling arthritis, and me, who has mild-but-occasionally-awful arthritis.
Many of them have represented material breaches of public trust, and have uncovered dishonest development and business practices throughout their organization. Yet they're still selling voting systems to several states. Unbelievable.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Hear, Hear.
Touch screen voting is an overpriced, overly complex solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
Mark original paper ballots, then count them by machine for speed. They remain as original, voter-marked, legal documents in case of a recount.
The supreme court of Germany (Bundesverfassungsgericht) recently ruled that electronic voting machines are a violation of the constitutional openness requirement.
Scantron: More then meets the eye.
I mean: Not anything more then meets the optical eye.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Can't you get someone there to help you out?
Does it really matter if a person there designated to help people knows who you voted for? sure on a wide scale basis that can be bad.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
These WERE optical scan ballots! The problems were in the counting system
Scantron machines aren't a panacea for curing the ills of electronic voting. There are physical ballots which can be counted manually which is good for auditing, but most states have laws which specify the rules under which a physical recount can occur: evidence of election tampering, and a too-close-to-call election. With respect to the first scenario, a losing candidate will not get standing to have the courts order a recount unless there is evidence of election tampering. But in order to force the state to investigate election tampering you must first present the evidence of election tampering--Catch-22. In the second scenario of close elections, the actual scanned ballots aren't necessarily counted, but just the totals taken off of each scantron machine's tape are compared with the numbers uploaded to the tabulating servers. A scantron machine can still produce vote totals that do not match what the physical ballots show, and the tabulating servers can still be messed with, especially if the tabulating software has sucky/non-existent auditing capabilities like the Diebold versions.
What needs to happen are random statewide audits of various precincts by the state election board (handled by a neutral third-party accounting firm) to make sure that physical ballots match the machine tapes that match the totals uploaded to the tabulation servers. There's still too many weaknesses in the chain to make electronic voting a reliable alternative to pencil and paper.
I am not saying we shouldn't fix this problem, but what about a far greater problems that revolve around the fact that non-citizens are voting in US elections and union workers are voting twice in places like PA? Why don't we address bigger proven problems if we are to fix "potential problems" like this.
Respect the Constitution
I'm much more worried that the Diebold system works exactly as designed, which is much more sinister than a "flaw" unexpectedly creeping into the software. I say the developers should either prove this wasn't intentional or go to jail for conspiracy to commit election fraud.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Really, everyone involved. Good Job.
It has been my observation that there is an inverse relationship in having computer knowledge and the desire to have computerized voting.
...but the election officials will fight change tooth-and-nail.
Is it because they find it to be a valuable tool?
Is it because the technology does something that no other product or process can?
Or maybe because they get free stuff (i.e. bribes) from Diebold to stay where they are?
Nope. They just don't want to have to learn anything new.
Any change in the processes & technology will be achieved against the wishes of the election officials who should be working for our interests but instead are seeking the easiest path.
A (thankfully FORMER) elections official.
'The "them" will "do" what they can to steal an election here and there.'
That seems to be the correct interpretation, that the flaws are deliberate. If there were a few defects and they were corrected immediately, that could be accidental. But we've been discussing Diebold flaws for years. Most Slashdot readers, I'm guessing, would be fired for living with something so buggy.
Diebold changed the name of its unit that sells voting hardware and software to Premier Election Solutions. Don't be confused; it's still Diebold.
Won't work. And I'm not talking about politically.
Current military doctrine relies on a highly trained, highly professional force. It's not just hand-the-guy-a-gun.
Draftees won't be able to fit in properly.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Bush getting elected makes complete sense now...
With the known remote exploits, having the system not log certain events, like clearing the log or maybe overwriting the earlier log, would allow an election to be stolen easily.
Of course, Obama is a lot more net-friendly...
Maybe he stole it back. :)
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
From the random quote at the bottom of the page when I read this thread:
"The time for action is past! Now is the time for senseless bickering."
Seemed appropriate.
Paper voting is not perfect but the flaws are known. Electronic voting machines can be given different kinds of flaws from year to year... the long and short of it is, paper may not be perfect but it's a hell of a lot BETTER than electronic systems.
Why is it that the consequences of making and/or tampering with electronic voting machines are non-existent while the consequences for putting unauthorized software on a Las Vegas slot machine are harsh? Is grandma's right to slowly lose money more important than the integrity of our elections?
You know it works.
http://openvoting.org/
Ignore your rights and they'll go away
Diebold executives could be charged with:
And this is just off the top of my head. But sadly, this isn't receiving the outrage it should, and I suspect the reason is because Americans have always been largely apathetic to things which didn't directly affect them.
We needn't worry about things like democratic process and the right to vote; if we ignore the problems long enough, we won't have to worry about election fairness, because there won't be any elections. This is how it starts, folks. For that reason alone, these guys should be charged with crimes.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Most of those scanners will detect pen or pencil. Why not just mark it with a Marks-A-Lot or other similar wide-tip marker?
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
It's supposed to be a private ballot, and because of the social circles I'm in I frequently know the people running the voting table. Sometimes I'd rather them not know who I voted for.
I honestly have no idea if those work or not. If they do it sounds like a great solution.
http://www.slate.com/id/2107388/
"Unlike the machines used in the United States, the Indian machines are not networked. Each one has to be physically carried to a central counting center. This takes more time, of course, but reduces the opportunities for mischief. Someone who wanted to throw the election would have to fiddle with thousands of machines, one at a time.
Tampering with each machine is what some computer scientists call "retail fraud." "Wholesale fraud" is when someone rigs the software from the outset or meddles with hundreds of machines at a central tabulation center. Both types of fraud are troublesome, of course, but to different degrees. The Indian machines are vulnerable to retail fraud but, because of the basic design, are much less subject to wholesale fraud."
What is it worth, in terms of dollars and power, to hijack big elections, to wind up owning the government? Now, what is the worth of the entire total electronic voting machine "industry"? Now subtract the second from the first, notice the result... in other words, the real vote hijackers never cared a bit about the potential of losing some penny ante chump change pawn company down the timeline sometime, especially if they were the ones "in charge" of "insuring the integrity of the vote" in the first place...
flatfoot 101, motive, means, opportunity....
You really think Obama doesn't come certified and approved by the Great Old Ones? Look at what he has done and look at who he has appointed. Lizards, every one.
Your brain is not a computer.
You don't fuck with elections. The reason we have elections is so that we don't have to murder tyrants all the time. Its a courtesy to the people in power that we remove them from office with a ballot instead of a razor sharp blade.
When stupid worthless moronic assholes like the ones working at Diebold, who intentially designed their equipment to make elections more stealable, start fucking with the electoral process for personal gain on such a widespread level, the only answer is to convict them of treason and hang them from the nearest high tree.
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
Corruption is what will destroy America.
Why is America so obsessed with voting machines?
Paper ballots can always be recounted and re-examined. Harder to steal an election then, yes?
It's really interesting to know about this because Diebold's Voting Systems are being considered for the next Presidential Election in Argentina, in 2011. This only adds to the really creepy stuff that's going on these days, such as moving Legislative election's date (which violates Argentina's constitution) just to favor the current president. Using flawed electronic voting systems just adds more uncertainty about how people really cast their votes.
Are they allowed to link to this in Australia?
But seriously, why aren't there people on trial
about this?
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
And if your goal is the opposite, what is the order in which one removes these boxes from use?
If you're from Russia, chuck out the first two, then just use the last two ad nauseam.
Consider yourself spoken to.
.. the impact of who came to power (or likely have hung on for 4 years longer than voted for) has been felt worldwide - they "presided" over an era marked by unprecedented greed, created by loosening practically all known controls, with it pet poodles in the UK happily playing along.
Don't forget that those who rig elections DO SO FOR A REASON - remember the 'ol rule of capitalism; we're in it for the money.
If you would really want to act on the bigger picture you should play a game of "where are they now" - those that have turned a blind eye to the huge helpings of tax money (or to blatant abuse of quite sensible and clear rules) got well rewarded for that. They either have fat bank accounts, fat retirement pensions or got an executive post with fat salaries. The simplest example is one T Blair in the UK, AFAIK he now works as "advisor" at the one US company that has the cash to buy up everyone else on the cheap and thus stands to make good money - while you and I pay for the bailouts (and bonuses) for generations to come.
However, I don't think you stand a chance of unearthing this - they've covered themselves well. Corruption tends to be self sustainable due to shared interest. Oh, and I agree with you to call it treason - who owns large chunks of the US now? Foreigners..
Those who cast the votes decide nothing, those who count the votes decide everything.
... Give them time to change that ;)
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Usually when software goes wrong I can see that it may be hard. Internet Explorer may be shit when compared to the competition, but then I guess writing a browser may be difficult, I could see how you could mess that up. Similarly having the implementation of an encryption scheme fail, I can see how you coudl mess that up. That stuff is hard.
However, how the fuck do you mess up counting votes? I can see it fail on the hardware end, optic sensors giving wrongr eadings, inkjet printers not working... but failing to write a program that count votes? This is beyond pathetic. From what I've read about Diebold it sounds as if they were too lazy to actually write and audit the software and simply did the equivalent of sticking the results in some generic spreadsheet program.
Conspiracy theory: Diebold releases this admission in order to support Coleman's call for a special election to overturn Franken's win. The special election uses new Diebold machines with "fixed" software (and still no paper audit trail).
To admit their malfeasance. We've known about this for how many years? I really hope they get put out of business, and the Carlyle Group too!
Bailout money!
Clearly, if Diebold had BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars, they could make this work. I mean, come on, it's the best solution, right?
Is this true? In school I was told it *only* detected a #2 pencil. (Yeah, it didn't make any sense to me either.)
We've been lied to all these years!
[/sarcasm]
10 FILL MUG WITH COFFEE
20 DRINK COFFEE
30 GOTO 10
Other systems are also used in Texas. In my area (Austin) those damned eSlate DREs are used. No paper trail at all, not even the stupid toilet-paper rolls. I've sent objections to the Sec of State's office, but never get a response.
If you open the code and there is no such validation on a deleted command for a ballot,
to log it, then it is not a flaw or bug, just a proof of concept someone wanted to leave a back door open in case they needed to fix an election. I am a software developer and there are many steps you take for integrity that avoids such things, such as placing a flag in the db as IsDeleted instead of actually deleting the records, and your query would be select * from votes where IsDeleted 1.
End of story, we all knew they were fixing elections, this just proves it.
Scantron ballots are used in Texas, and there's always a paper ballot trail of the actual vote in case of a ballot contest. I'm no Luddite, but I've never understood this rush to replace technology that works with the next big thing just because it's the next big thing.
Or why make the technology so complicated in the first place? My proposal: the electronic voting machine prints out a filled-in ballot. You can look at it to make sure the correct circles are filled in and complain right there on the spot if not. Use the machine totals for preliminary results if your citizens demand such things, but use the paper ballots for the official totals. End result: you get the speedy answers people seem to want with the auditability that free elections require.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Just a question....
We can all agree that punch cards are terrible, but there are other alternatives which are secure and accountable. Scantron ballots are used in Texas, and there's always a paper ballot trail of the actual vote in case of a ballot contest.
Not everywhere in Texas. In El Paso County (and possibly elsewhere) they use Diebold machines with no paper trail. It also happens to be the case that EP is one of the few TX counties with a slim Democratic majority. I don't know if Repugs took over the election commission in order to get Diebold sh*t adopted here for convenience of election stealing, or if the Dems brought this on themselves.
The instant Diebold's president said he'd deliver Ohio's votes to the next Republican president, everybody knew there were "flaws" in their voting machines that weren't so much flaws as deliberately engineered methods of manipulating voting results. Nobody who has been following this is the slightest bit surprised, and nobody cares what Diebold has to say about it any more either. It's like the burglar saying "Okay, I did it" ten years after he was caught with the property, arrested, tried, and convicted.
I realize no one method is going to be perfect for everyone, but Scantron is very bad for people like my father, who has crippling arthritis, and me, who has mild-but-occasionally-awful arthritis.
Here in LA County we're using the Inkavote system, which involves an optical scanner, but the mechanics of marking your ballot are very similar to punch cards. You don't have to press as hard, though, and the stylus makes a VERY dark mark. Always a perfect circle, too.
Until the last couple elections, we just put our ballots into a collection box, but now they have us put them in the reader ourselves... no one ever touches your ballot except you (unless a recount happens).
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
The adjective is "Democratic", as in "Democratic governor". Not "Democrat governor".
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make install -not war