Five e-vote machines, all critically flawed.

[SirNitram]

Link

CINCINNATI — All five voting systems used in Ohio, a state whose electoral votes narrowly swung two elections toward President Bush, have critical flaws that could undermine the integrity of the 2008 general election, a report commissioned by the state’s top elections official has found.

“It was worse than I anticipated,” the official, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, said of the report. “I had hoped that perhaps one system would test superior to the others.”

At polling stations, teams working on the study were able to pick locks to access memory cards and use hand-held devices to plug false vote counts into machines. At boards of election, they were able to introduce malignant software into servers.

Ms. Brunner proposed replacing all of the state’s voting machines, including the touch-screen ones used in more than 50 of Ohio’s 88 counties. She wants all counties to use optical scan machines that read and electronically record paper ballots that are filled in manually by voters.

She called for legislation and financing to be in place by April so the new machines can be used in the presidential election next November. She said she could not estimate the cost of the changes.

Florida, another swing state with a history of voting problems, is also scrapping touch-screen machines and switching to optical scan ones for the election. Such systems have gained favor because experts say they are more reliable than others and, unlike most touch screens, they provide a paper trail for recounts.

Ms. Brunner, a Democrat, succeeded J. Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican who came under fire for simultaneously overseeing the 2004 election and serving as co-chairman of President Bush’s re-election campaign in Ohio.

She ordered the study as part of a pledge to overhaul voting after problems made headlines for hours-long lines in the 2000 and 2004 elections and a scandal in Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, that led to the convictions of two elections workers on charges of rigging recounts. Ms. Brunner’s office temporarily seized control of that county’s board of elections.

The study released Friday found that voting machines and central servers made by Elections Systems and Software; Premier Election Solutions, formerly Diebold; and Hart InterCivic; were easily corrupted.

Chris Riggall, a Premier spokesman, said hardware and software problems had been corrected in his company’s new products, which will be available for installation in 2008.

“It is important to note,” he said, “that there has not been a single documented case of a successful attack against an electronic voting system, in Ohio or anywhere in the United States.”

Ken Fields, a spokesman for Election Systems and Software, said his company strongly disagreed with some of the report’s findings. “We can also tell you that our 35 years in the field of elections has demonstrated that Election Systems and Software voting technology is accurate, reliable and secure,” he said.

The $1.9 million federally financed study assembled corporate and academic teams to conduct parallel assessments. A bipartisan group of 12 election board directors and deputy directors acted as advisers.

The academic team, made up of faculty members and students from Cleveland State University, Pennsylvania State, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Pennsylvania, said systemic change was needed. “All of the studied systems possess critical security failures that render their technical controls insufficient to guarantee a trustworthy election,” the team wrote.

In addition to switching machines, Ms. Brunner recommended eliminating polling stations that are used for fewer than five precincts as a cost-cutting measure, and introducing early voting 15 days before Election Day.

Funny how Diebold can make such secure ATMs, but can't manage a voting machine that isn't easily popped open and the result re-written.

[MKSheppard]

ATMs don't need to be portable. They're generally fixed or semi-fixed locations; so you can afford to be heavy. Voting machines have to fold down, and then be lugged all over a county and then unpacked by volunteers; not teamsters.

[SirNitram]

ATMs don't need to be portable. They're generally fixed or semi-fixed locations; so you can afford to be heavy. Voting machines have to fold down, and then be lugged all over a county and then unpacked by volunteers; not teamsters.

This is an excuse for selling a voting machine that can be easily hacked with some stuff in a pocket? Nah, doesn't quite fly. At least ballot-stuffing requires a little more in your pockets!

[The Yosemite Bear]

oh yeah, and California already recalled their voting machines here in mariposia county

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Did they mention what sort of problems? Sure, there are security problems but what sort of security problems?

[SirNitram]

Did they mention what sort of problems? Sure, there are security problems but what sort of security problems?

..It's right in the article.

At polling stations, teams working on the study were able to pick locks to access memory cards and use hand-held devices to plug false vote counts into machines.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Did they mention what sort of problems? Sure, there are security problems but what sort of security problems?

At polling stations, teams working on the study were able to pick locks to access memory cards and use hand-held devices to plug false vote counts into machines. At boards of election, they were able to introduce malignant software into servers.

Ms. Brunner proposed replacing all of the state’s voting machines, including the touch-screen ones used in more than 50 of Ohio’s 88 counties. She wants all counties to use optical scan machines that read and electronically record paper ballots that are filled in manually by voters.

She called for legislation and financing to be in place by April so the new machines can be used in the presidential election next November. She said she could not estimate the cost of the changes.

Florida, another swing state with a history of voting problems, is also scrapping touch-screen machines and switching to optical scan ones for the election. Such systems have gained favor because experts say they are more reliable than others and, unlike most touch screens, they provide a paper trail for recounts.

ok you see the problem

[brianeyci]

Pick locks? Hahaha MIT lockpicking guide to the rescue!

This is what I'm imagining: a guy coming up with a dime like a washroom lock in a rundown bar, and popping open a lock. Like on a piece of shit arcade machine. Is that the kind of lock they're talking about, the tiny standard kinds?

They will spin it by saying, you're insulting the integrity of the election officials, nobody will get close enough to pick the locks, etc., etc. Nevermind that the whole point is to guard against potential abuse of the system, and anybody could violate the system.

Computerized voting absolutely sucks. Any system which places administration and control in the hands of the few with technical skills instead of everybody (anybody can count) is inferior. The UN can and does hold elections with huge plastic and cardboard bins, special tape, and observers. All low-tech.

These optical systems, they leave a paper trail but can the voter himself read the paper trail? The obvious fail safe should be, the machine prints out a paper, the voter reads it to make sure that the machine isn't changing the vote on him, and he puts it in a sealed bin. There is no way around that, no other way to guarantee perfect transparency. Adding a middle-man in a computer is akin to you as a voter, giving your ballot to another person, then that person putting the vote in the ballot box for you. Without a paper trail that the voter can verify himself, the middle man could change the vote on him to whatever he wants and nobody will ever know except for the technicians who made the software.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

ATMs don't need to be portable. They're generally fixed or semi-fixed locations; so you can afford to be heavy. Voting machines have to fold down, and then be lugged all over a county and then unpacked by volunteers; not teamsters.

This is an excuse for selling a voting machine that can be easily hacked with some stuff in a pocket? Nah, doesn't quite fly. At least ballot-stuffing requires a little more in your pockets!

Pay no attention to him, Nit. He's just defending the deliberate approval, however tacit, of stolen elections by the Neocons.

[Gerald Tarrant]

I'm stunned that these problems are still cropping up. Non-standard interfaces would probably solve most of this. Add in a 3 or 4 dollar combination lock to foil the more casual (not equipped with bolt cutters) fraud crowd.

Lastly, a very simple solution, the machine prints your ballot and you double check it. And if it's proper you seal it and have the election monitors affix some sort of certification or seal to the thing. Then there will always be a certified paper record if there are allegations of impropriety.

[Gandalf]

How isolated are the voters that they could conceivably pick a lock and tool around with a voting machine?

[Phantasee]

How isolated are the voters that they could conceivably pick a lock and tool around with a voting machine?

Usually a booth, sometimes just cardboard on a table, sometimes with curtains around them.

[bilateralrope]

Lastly, a very simple solution, the machine prints your ballot and you double check it. And if it's proper you seal it and have the election monitors affix some sort of certification or seal to the thing. Then there will always be a certified paper record if there are allegations of impropriety.

So what happens if the ballot either has the wrong vote on it, or the machine records a different vote to what is printed out ?

[brianeyci]

If the ballot has the wrong vote on it, the voter will notice and tell the elections officer, who will shut down the station for irregularities.

If the machine records a different vote to what's printed out, there will be a mandatory recount of the paper votes that will come out later, and the paper votes will take precedence. If there is a statistically significant difference, either the paper or the machine is lying.

The mere possibility of getting caught in the act and losing billions in government contracts should force them to make proper voting machines. It's worked for ATM's, and it's the only thing corporations understand: hit them in the pocketbook.

[Flagg]

How isolated are the voters that they could conceivably pick a lock and tool around with a voting machine?

What makes you think it's not election workers who would dick around with it?

[Mange]

I'm sure this is a dumb question, but... When we have elections here, we place the ballots in an envelope (and for those inclined to do so, they can use a pencil and put a cross before the name of a candidate to the Riksdag who the voter thinks should be elected to a seat first), the envelope is then placed in ballot boxes which are opened immediately after the poll closes and the ballots are counted manually by the election officers at each polling station. After the first count, the ballots are sealed in security bags and transferred to the County Administrative Board for a final count. No hassle with faulty voting machines which fails to punch through or whatever. Why go through that routine again?

[brianeyci]

Speed. Literally the average North American voter is too fucking impatient to wait two days for the election results, and speed is considered almost a universal greatness, even though knowing a couple days faster does nothing.

It is the same problem with 24 hour news networks. The viewer wants speed, news right away, so newspapers are a secondary source to television.

This speed comes at a significant cost, and in the case of voting machines, is not worth it because assaulting the mechanisms by which leaders are chosen undermines the very foundation of the constitution itself. But still, people want speed.

It also has another unintended detrimental effect: less people are needed to volunteer for the election, less involvement by the citizens counting, and less involvement with the political process at a grassroots level.

But more corporate involvement and corporate contracts... which are of course, a great thing.

[Ace Pace]

ATMs don't need to be portable. They're generally fixed or semi-fixed locations; so you can afford to be heavy. Voting machines have to fold down, and then be lugged all over a county and then unpacked by volunteers; not teamsters.

What a fucking red herring shep and you know it. Election machines don't have to be that durable, they have to be safe, secure. That means covering stuff up with tamperproof seals, protection, and not being able to hack them within two minutes.

[bilateralrope]

If the ballot has the wrong vote on it, the voter will notice and tell the elections officer, who will shut down the station for irregularities.

So everyone who turns up to vote there has to go somewhere else, meanwhile the wrong vote remains recorded.

Or do you give the elections officer a way to change votes t fix this, thus opening it up for them to tamper with the votes ?

If the machine records a different vote to what's printed out, there will be a mandatory recount of the paper votes that will come out later, and the paper votes will take precedence. If there is a statistically significant difference, either the paper or the machine is lying.

If your going to have a recount anyway, what is the point of the voting machine ?

And if your not going to guarantee a recount then I can see the incorrect votes slipping through. Just consider that I'm not trusting the companies making the machines here.

The mere possibility of getting caught in the act and losing billions in government contracts should force them to make proper voting machines. It's worked for ATM's, and it's the only thing corporations understand: hit them in the pocketbook.

I remember this thread where people were selecting Democrat but the machine was telling them they voted Republican. However I don't remember the company producing the machines getting punished at all over this. So were they ever punished over it ?

At this point I doubt that any machine that errors in the Republican's favor will trigger punishment.

[Durandal]

Computerized voting absolutely sucks.

No, Diebold's implementation of computerized voting sucks.

Any system which places administration and control in the hands of the few with technical skills instead of everybody (anybody can count) is inferior.

I'm sorry, but that's bullshit. It'd be incredibly easy to do electronic voting in a transparent, accurate manner. That Diebold engineers are incompetent is not an indictment of the entire concept. Adding numbers to columns is not some intractable problem in computer science. It's a very well-understood problem. Diebold is simply on the Republican party's payroll, and they have an interest in making their system flawed and unreliable.

At the end of the day, human beings are subject to fatigue, bias and deception. These are not the characteristics we want in the thing counting votes. A computer with completely open and documented software would be able to deliver better results faster. The problem is that the politicians in Congress have an interest in making vote counts unreliable.

[Uraniun235]

Every time some asshat writes a guest editorial in the Oregonian bemoaning the terrible loss of the "election day experience" due to our switch to a totally vote-by-mail system, I think of shit like this article and I feel grateful we don't have to put up with this sort of shit. I hope Diebold goes bankrupt and I hope everyone responsible for their shoddy voting products goes to pound-you-in-the-ass prison someday.

[Phantasee]

Every time some asshat writes a guest editorial in the Oregonian bemoaning the terrible loss of the "election day experience" due to our switch to a totally vote-by-mail system, I think of shit like this article and I feel grateful we don't have to put up with this sort of shit. I hope Diebold goes bankrupt and I hope everyone responsible for their shoddy voting products goes to pound-you-in-the-ass prison someday.

Oregon doesn't have polling stations anymore? How do the homeless vote?

[Stark]

Durandal is right. Making a secure, transparent and tamper-proof electronic voting system is TRIVIAL (at least using the level of tamper-proof present with paper votes). It's absurd that these machines are made in the richest democracy in the world, and the only explanation that makes sense is deliberate malice.

That said, it seems that America has already made some retarded decisions around their voting system. All the different methods and rooms and shit, it just boggles the mind.

[Uraniun235]

Every time some asshat writes a guest editorial in the Oregonian bemoaning the terrible loss of the "election day experience" due to our switch to a totally vote-by-mail system, I think of shit like this article and I feel grateful we don't have to put up with this sort of shit. I hope Diebold goes bankrupt and I hope everyone responsible for their shoddy voting products goes to pound-you-in-the-ass prison someday.

Oregon doesn't have polling stations anymore? How do the homeless vote?

We don't allow the homeless to vote! Haha!

No, I'm kidding. Here you go. source:

Residence Address of Homeless

* The residence address of a homeless person shall be any place within the county describing the physical location of the person
* The mailing address of a homeless person may be the County Elections Office