Slashdot Mirror
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.
---
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'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.
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.
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.
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.
'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.
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.
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.
Because when a flawed machine counts the ballot, every vote tally is suspect, every vote may have been miscounted. This is a much bigger problem than the traditional methods of ballot-box stuffing, because the scope is so much wider.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
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 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.
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.