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Sequoia Disclosing Voting System Source To DC
buzzinglikeafridge writes "After Sequoia voting machines registered more votes than there were voters in DC's primaries last September, and the city threatened a lawsuit as a result, the company agreed to disclose technical details of the system (including source code) to the city. Although this isn't the first time the company has disclosed the source code of its machines, it is the first time the machines' blueprints will be handed over as well."
About fucking time.
if(candidate == "Bush") { castVote(candidate); castVote(candidate); } else { castVote(candidate); }
You want me to use your machine for my elections? Hand it all over. All. Source, blueprints, all. I want to audit it. For as long as I want and by whomever I please. Yes, of course you will get my signatures that your code will not be given to anyone (except for audits, but not to keep) and it will be only used to audit your machines. No problem.
You don't let me? Ok.
NEXT OFFER!
Frankly, it's a HUGE biz. Once you have the foot in the door, do you think they'll audit your competitor or will they order their next machines with you again because they've been audited already? YOU want to sell ME your machines. YOU are about to earn a ton of money, enough that you'll never have to create any other product anymore. You're selling to the government, not some beancounting company, they won't question if your software costs a million despite costing you 10k.
Do you think I'll find some company willing to comply with my requirements if you don't bend over?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Surely with something as important as a voting system, any private supplier should have to submit the blueprints & code to some kind of independent panel for approval / verification as a matter of course?
Who the fuck trusts a corporation to implement a something that is fair, correct and well engineered, without any oversight?
The error that caused all this logged 4759 votes - a prime number. I doubt anyone is going to find that in the code because this was clearly some sort of conspiracy..
I don't understand how voting machines can be so complicated that such gross errors occur. Surely it can't be much more than a glorified counting program that also keeps some sort of log about what it's done. I'm making the presumption that these programs are for some reason very complicated, and that's why errors like this are more frequent than they should be. Can anyone either explain why they're so complicated or give another reason why they seem to spew out so many errors?
(Aside from the witty "they're all programmed to vote for candidate X!" responses.)
We can't discount the possibility that the problems were caused deliberately, by Italian infiltrators, unbeknownst to either party. This is known by security researchers as the "Italian-in-the-Middle" (IitM) attack. IitM attacks are growing more sophisticated and nefarious by the day, and, as this article proves, are a grave threat to our Democracy. Our wives and hot dogs will not be safe from the Italian menace until Barack Obama takes decisive and swift action. The Italians must be hunted down and smoked out of their caves.
The machines that protect democracy include jet fighters, naval warcraft, guns, rockets, bombs ---- and voting machines.
The US Government wouldn't buy a any of those other things without a massive effort to make sure they were secure, why not voting machines as well? If you can compromise those, the rest are easy.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
If it was actually being taken seriously it would be done by hand counted paper ballots.
There are already good paper voting systems in use that meet important criteria such as:
1) Being easy for most people to understand how their vote is counted and the effort it takes to cheat the system.
2) Allowing the different political parties and independent bodies have their observers present to observe the votes as they are being counted.
Because, I suggest that: elections don't just have to be fair. They have to be _seen_ as fair.
Otherwise if there's a "surprise" result, there may be too many people on the streets for the police to quieten down. And that is a bad thing. If an election is seen as fair, while there may still be sore losers on the streets, the rest will be drowning their sorrows/disgust/disappointment in less troublesome ways.
Electronic voting fails that way.
It's a black box that the average voter does not understand. And worse, an expert in the field will tell you that it's a black box that makes cheating easier. How can you prove that the source code you see, is the one that was actually running during the election? You can't! If an ATM makes an error, someone in ops, accounts or audit might notice the creation or destruction of money. But the creation and destruction of votes is hard to detect and prove unless it gets to a ridiculous state (like now).
I've been in the IT line for years and I see no good reason to have electronic voting systems in a Democracy.
The more voters you have, the more counters and observers you can have. Hand counting scales fine.
I find it darkly amusing that the most powerful country in the world spends hundreds of billions to choose governments oops "establish democracy" in other countries, and can't even spend a much lower amount to do things properly at home.
I honestly think you give too much weight on the "and you can charge more part" and not enough on the "wouldn't be very expensive, and would be a tough sell."
Computers are very complicated things. They automate our banking relates issues, let us talk to each other on line, manage our traffic lights... And do that all with that mystical magic of theirs behind the scene.
Now, someone comes and tells you that there is system that can take care of a vital piece in the western civilization - voting. It can't be anything simple. Hell, would you buy some simple system for that?
Well, of course you would! Because you know that computers don't work on magic and simpler the better. However, I fear that many officials feel better about buying a complex and expensive system that they understand nothing about than using a simple system that they understand.
Sequoia voting machines are secure, unless someone clicks here:
http://www.google.com/search?q=sequoia+yellow+button&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=com.ubuntu:en-US:unofficial&client=firefox-a
I used to work for a state division of elections certifying voting equipment. I wound up getting canned. I think one of the rationale was that I raised an eyebrow at problems like this.
I'd love to know what American attitudes are towards open-source. I've known plenty of people who consider open-source inherently insecure, since the public can see how it works. American idio--er, voters, probably think a super-duper secret voting system is more secure than one that's open for public inspection. :-/
If everyones name was attached to their vote there would be a way to verify the election outcome. Are people really that ashamed of who they vote for? No one is getting executed or persecuted based on their vote.
I won't object to communities getting source code to voting machines under free software licenses, but when voting machines are used only to prepare voter-verified paper ballots never to count ballots (as they should be), security concerns for these machines drop dramatically. I shouldn't have to use such a machine in the first place, but if I choose to use a machine to prepare my voter-verified paper ballot source code concerns drop to making sure that bugs in the program won't stop me from using the program under unforseen conditions. Communities deserve software freedom, and that is sufficient justification for communities to run their own voting systems completely.
Digital Citizen
I don't understand what this accomplishes. What are they going to do? Look for bugs? They already know there are bugs. If it was sabotaged, they're not going to get the code that was used and will only find bugs.
This is like calling the fire department after the barn has already burned to the ground, except that the fire will likely be allowed to continue.
I was glad to see, at least in Amsterdam, we're back to the red pencil for the EU vote last saturday.
Much simpler and faster. And still the Netherlands is going to get a fine from the EU for releasing voting results early, so I guess counting those votes wasn't a big deal either.
The reason there are voting irregularities is NOT the problem with the machines... it's with the people who set them up and read the votes off of them.
Can your boss look at your vehicle registration? Vehicle registration should be secrete so your boss doesn't know you have a second vehicle and are working at a second job for the competition to pay for that vehicle and fire you. Can any random asshole look up your SNN? You people are a bunch of stupid assholes that try and protect everything wrong with the system rather than fix it.
I can just hear the DC election commissioners now, poring over the source code: "What is this? Why can't they write in plain English? What's this 'Studio H' stuff supposed to mean?"