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Electronic Voting: Your Worst Nightmares are True
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu Sep 04, 2003 02:58 PM
from the its-only-gonna-get-worse dept.
from the its-only-gonna-get-worse dept.
jfreon writes "On Democracy Now Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting fame, disclosed (near the end of the transcript) that in the compromised 1.8Gigs off Diebold's FTP site they uncovered "an actual election file containing actual votes on election day from San Luis Obispo County, California". Problem is, the date stamp was 3:31pm - during voting hours! The Diebold system uses a wireless network card. Worse: "So that means if they can pull the information in, they can also send information back into those machines. ""
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Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:5, Informative)
Yep. And guess what party that woud be?
From the article:
According to Harris, a study of the campaign contributions made by Diebold and its employees revealed an unusual pattern: Hundreds of thousands of dollars were being funneled to a few Republican candidates with very little to any other party.
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Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:5, Interesting)
From today's Ohio Beacon Journal [ohio.com]"
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MSFT and Republicans dead in one global blow (Score:5, Interesting)
All things being equal (they aren't), Bush has done enough damage and the press is bold enough with him that he cannot win relection without: it being handed to him by a blunder of an idiot opponent, or if he steals it through fraud.
We are going into the economic winter of an inevitable Kondratieff Cycle [gold-eagle.com]delayed by massive deficit spending. Whatever party wins the next election will take the blame for this.
Based on the momentem of electronic voter machine replacment and the detailed widespread press coverage of the hanging/dimpled chad recount process, if the presidential election is in within 0-5% there will be great hubbub and sevral recounts.
Bush will become president again after recounts play out. The media will be forced to cover the advantages of open source vs proprietary software. It's to short a logical leap for the press not to take.
Durring the mayhem and finger pointing US companies that make software will become the biggest boogie men in the questionable election. Rigged or not, the mistrust of the govt will be enourmous. The stigma will linger and people will understand the software/IP alternitive en-masse for the first time.
When the market/housing/bonds/currency all crash, because the chinese unpeg the yuan from the dollar as late as possible (2007 3/4 as per the WTO) and the yuan springs back hard destablizing everything. (they will do this as sabotage or an economic nuke.) Republicans will take all the blame for the following depresion and the corruption that caused it. (Nothing sucks like a Hoover)
The Republican party will be dispanded, and perhaps a world war (over intelectual property) will occour. Laws on software will radically change for the better in 2012-2015 bringing the US inline with less recent but still new international IP law.
As crazy as it seems, the scarriest thing to me right now is a Democrat winning. Most of these things will still happen but the Democrats will take the blame. Democrats are way to weak to survive a disasterous presidency and will dispand.
Obviously whatever party is dispanded will be replaced, but the populist replacment will take time to accumulate power and the country will swing hard to the left or the right.
Somebody please laugh at me.
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Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:5, Insightful)
But seriously, all politicians are evil, and substantial campaign contributions (especially from companies or special interest groups) should be illegal. Dammit!
Sure, say what you want, but I can't believe you really think the manufactures of our voting systems should fall within the same rules as normal companies.
We have special restrictions for all sorts of vendors to the US Gov. For instance most military contractors need to certify that none of their employees are non-citizens.
Saying that voting machine manufacturers should be as impartial as possible is hardly a radical idea.
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Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:5, Insightful)
Defense contractors screen their employees all the time, because security is important there. Is the security of our elections any less important?
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Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:5, Insightful)
However, the fact that the company is run by republicans isn't relevant. Both parties are corrupt. They're both bought, there are conflicts of interest with both, etc. Bush and Haliburton, the Clinton's and their scandal, etc. I wouldn't trust either of them and until people realize that they're simply two sides of a plutocracy we're going to be screwed.
To use these machines from an obviously biased company is tantamount to election fraud. Saying otherwise, pretending that everyone looks past their personal preferences to provide a fair playing field, is just ridiculous and goes against all of recorded history. The *only* way we'll get a fair result is if people who hate each other watch every step of this together, both watching for the other to screw up, and both afraid to cheat for fear of being watched.
It's not a question of if this particular company is crooked. That's a given. The question is how to keep everyone honest.
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Re:Let's not neglect the donkeys (Score:5, Informative)
The 17 counts he went to jail on were for mail fraud and paying people to do nothing.
Maybe there is a better example? Say in Chicago
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Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:5, Funny)
We Do (The Stonecutter's Song)
2F09 - 8th January 1995
Who controls the British crown?
Who keeps the metric system down?
We do! We do!
Who keeps Atlantis off the maps?
Who keeps the Martians under wraps?
We do! We do!
Who holds back the electric car?
Who makes Steve Guttenberg a star?
We do! We do!
Who robs the cave fish of their site?
Who rigs every Oscar night?
We do! We do!
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Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:4, Interesting)
Frankly, either way it's scary.
But the rampant security issues, rather than one carefully managed secret hole, indicate that the first option is much more likely.
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Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:5, Funny)
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Why bother? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Why bother? (Score:5, Interesting)
Honestly, it would be good to have hackers...and I mean real good hackers, not script kiddies, change the results of a large election to a party like one of the above just to show the real danger to having machines like this wide open.
While I don't normally advocate the breaking of laws (and I love white hat hacking), something dramatic does need to happen to wake some ordinary people up. Of course, this isn't really all that different from the 100,000 dead people who voted for JFK in 1960, but who is counting.
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Re:Why bother? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Why bother? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ironically, the "neo-conservative" tradition he and his cabinet (except Colin Powel) espouse, was, in fact, founded by a former Trotskyite and Communist. See the History of Irving Kristol [mediatransparency.org], father of William Kristol [weeklystandard.com]. So, we are in fact led by those who espouse an ideology closely crafted and derived by former Communists and Communist ideology. Former Communists running the GOP - go figure! --M
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Re:That's a good one (Score:5, Informative)
For example:
"Voter puched the 'Al Gore' punch. Voter emphasized the vote by CIRCLING the punch. Voter further empasized their intention by writing AL GORE on the ballot.
Cannot count as Al Gore because we're not counting."
The Miami Herald did a similar study that actually COUNTED the ballots and found Al Gore the winner.
The true story of the election can be found at www.gregpalast.com. Yes, Greg Palast DOES have an axe to grind. He hates liars and hypocrites. The first two chapters of "The Best Democracy Money" is available their.
To summarize:
DBT Online/ChoicePoint was selected as a high-ball at $2.3 million dollars. The company who had previously did the job charged $5700.
They were supposed to record cross-checking against public databases and verification phone calls. They did none of this. They were instructed NOT TO.
ChoicePoint was instructed to search for similar names and reduced Jack to John etc... It was supposed to create the maximum number of matches provided the individuals.
The County offices were ORDERED to scrub everyone on the list without doing verification because ChoicePoint was SUPPOSED to have done that verification.
" The State of Florida was content with a partial match of four: names( the first four letters were good enough), ate of birth, gender and race. Not even the address or state mattered in the mad dash to maximize the number of citizens stripped of their civil rights."
- The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, p56
Of course you probably listen to Rush. AS if he hastened spent 6 hours a day grinding axes for the last 15 years.
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Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would it be "bitter liberal types" who should be worried about voting machines that cannot be audited?
Why shouldn't right wingers also be concerned about voting machines that give you no way to verify who voted for what?
Why is it a "liberal" issues? And why do the right wingers instinctively want these machines?
Curiouser and curiouser!
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Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:5, Insightful)
1) God's will should be fundamentally irrelevant in the U.S. government (First Amendment).
2) The USA isn't "better" than other countries from a humanistic standpoint. There isn't anything super-special about the US that God would put it up on a pedestal over anyone else.
People who try to inject God's will into the US government are most often arrogant, naive, and ignorant Christians who think their rules are superior to any others (again violating the First Amendment).
The US is a country ruled by the People, all inclusive, regardless of faith.
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More headlines... (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh wait...
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Re:More headlines... (Score:5, Informative)
Look around the web on site:
here [thenation.com],
here [washingtonpost.com],
here [guardian.co.uk],
here [commondreams.org], and lots more places.
It is clear that the majority intent of Florida's voters was to send Gore to the White House. Furthermore, it is clear that Florida's voting process was seriously biased against minorities, who predominantly vote Democratic.
The only reason why this wasn't discovered during the recount was because the Bush family managed to cut the recount short as long as it was still favorable for Bush.
Or we need to add a new mod of "+1 strong opinion of of a bitter loser."
With Bush as president, we all are losing: we are getting wars, economic problems, huge budget deficits, a failing educational system, rollback of civil rights protections, deterioration of international relations, etc.
It is pretty depressing that Republicans care more about who the President had sex with than about how the country is doing.
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Voting machine manufacturer wants votes for Bush (Score:5, Flamebait)
"The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
Yes. Your votes are being scammed to keep the neocon scum in power.
Re:Voting machine manufacturer wants votes for Bus (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe fewer people will be able to form their opinions on freely available information that way. That's what you neocon/conservatives would like, after all. Just like Britney Spears says [drudgereportarchives.com]:
Don't question the authority. That's the way to go.
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Re:Voting machine manufacturer wants votes for Bus (Score:5, Interesting)
Additional revenue from add-on sales like this - and the service contracts that would go with it - are immensely profitable.
So what is going on here?
Also, they insult and ridicule anyone who tries to point out that electronic voting machines that cannot be audited are a problem! Even the hundreds of computer scientists who have spoken out are told they don't know what they are talking about. What IS going on here?
What would be so difficult about adding a printer, and having the voter look over the printout and then deposit it into a separate ballot box? Why are they so dead-set against doing this, even when it would make them tons more money? Are these Republican-owned "businesses" after something besides money?
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Re:Voting machine manufacturer wants votes for Bus (Score:5, Interesting)
Diebold's SEC filings [sec.gov] show their Chairman / President / CEO to be Mr. Walden W. O'Dell, who has donated [opensecrets.org] $2000 this summer to Senator George V. Voinovich [senate.gov], Republican from Ohio (Diebold's home state). Diebold Inc.'s soft money donations [opensecrets.org] also go to Republicans.
This does not demonstrate to me much evidence that Diebold is "after something other than money", it looks like routine political activity to me. But, while my quick research has neither managed to refute nor confirm your conspiracy theory, I'll pass it along anyway for whoever might be curious.
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Re:Voting machine manufacturer wants votes for Bus (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Voting machine manufacturer wants votes for Bus (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, this is one of the times I'd be LEAST likely to suspect election fraud. You seem to forget that any election more attention-getting than local school board is going to be continuously monitored by opinion polling.
If, as you suggest, the landslide was fraudulent, then the election results would have no relation to either the pre-election polls or the exit polling. This would attract an awful lot of attention in the media, and I believe that any fraud on the scale that you suggest would at least be openly accused.
The only place, in my mind, that election fraud would be useful beyond the threat of detection would be in extremely close races -- those that no one has any idea who will win. In those cases, than altering the votes by 1% would still be within the margin of error on even the exit polling, and so wouldn't be immediately suspicious.
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Re:Voting machine manufacturer wants votes for Bus (Score:5, Interesting)
And if the company - even though it would MAKE MORE MONEY - refused to make an add-on printer so a ballot could be printed, examined by the voter, and put in a separate ballot box for counting to verify that the machine correctly reported the totals...
Well, I might not be convinced he was going to cheat, but I sure wouldn't want to trust an election to his machines.
Remember, with these machines there is NO WAY to know if the machine correctly reported the vote.
SOME of us here work with computers, so we know that sometimes the computers make mistakes. So wouldn't it be a good thing if we had a way to verify what a machine reported?
What if a machine just broke down? Do we hold the election over again, or do we throw out all the votes from that precinct?
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Question (Score:4, Interesting)
Kjella
Boycott (Score:5, Funny)
seriously guys... (Score:4, Funny)
Information on Voting Machines Issue (Score:5, Informative)
mod me down (Score:4, Interesting)
Mod me down, because I am obviously too dumb to realize that just because the data from a machine makes it onto a server, does NOT mean that you can push data back.
You think, maybe, the voting machine pushes its data to a repository and defined intervals? Maybe? kinda?
teknopurge
Re:mod me down (Score:5, Insightful)
The people who built the machine are the same ones running the data stream. They've got ROOT. Having any data access in the middle of the election means that Diebold could write back too, and that simply shouldn't be possible with a well-designed voting system.
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Re:mod me down (Score:5, Interesting)
The connection is a plain old modem connection (as mentioned in the article). By its very nature it's able to receive information in addition to sending it. Hopefully the machines won't accept any modifications to the vote record, but this does establish that an previously unknown channel, open during an actual election, is available. It doesn't necessarily mean anything wrong was occurring, but it does mean that it's possible for something wrong to happen. For something as important as our democracy, I demand the highest levels of security. Trusting a private company with strong political ties to do the right thing seems stupid.
Hmmm, I'd really rather not have my voting machine sending its vote information to a private company in the middle of the vote. Again, as mentioned in the article, by law you cannot count the votes until the polls have closed. Making the numbers available to an outside party isn't allowed. (This is, of course, why there are exit polls instead of the networks just hooking up to the poll computers for up to the minute totals.)
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Calm down everyone (Score:5, Funny)
Worst nightmare??? (Score:5, Funny)
Reading doesn't imply writing (Score:5, Funny)
Not necessarily. Just because a resource can be read from doesn't mean it can be written to. With proper design...
Oh -- we're talking about Diebold? Nevermind...
This is why e-voting may never take off (Score:4, Insightful)
Every technological setback may end up as another knife in e-voting's back.
Upon Further Examination... (Score:5, Funny)
Edgar Neubauer
Prudence Goodwyfe
Mr. and Mrs. Bananas
Humphrey Boa-Gart
Snowball I
As expected they all voted for Sideshow Bob
Falicious logic in article (Score:5, Funny)
What is wrong with this picture? And if nothing is wrong why can't I edit the Slashdot home page?
Perhaps high-tech isn't the answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps a few precincts can be corrupted with paper voting, but the whole nation can be corrupted with electronic voting. What moron puts a wireless adapter on a voting machine, anyway?
Voting is a fundamental exercise in any democratic system. I think being very cautious and conservative is justified, here. Chasing electronic voting for its own sake is simply foolish. It almost seems the push for electronic voting is due only to hungry contractors trying to make a dime for themselves. The 2000 Florida vote is merely a red herring in all this.
Just make your X on your ballot (Score:5, Insightful)
Speed in counting? Who needs it? It's not like the offcials take office the day after the election anyway -- hell, the President has to wait two and a half frickin' months. Why the rush to have an instantly-countable system?
Furthermore, in many other large-ish countries (such as France, the UK and Germany), voting is still done by making a big honkin' X on a circle next to the name of the guy you want. And no, it's not a bubble form that has to be filled in just right -- just make your damn X as sloppy as you please. No hanging chads, no network to hack, no problems reading it. And they still have the results in by the morning in time for the early papers.
So why have electronic voting again?
Cheers,
Ethelred
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Talk to your Congresscritters (Score:5, Informative)
Help fix the problem! (Score:5, Informative)
The idea of EVM2003 is to create Free Software voting machine, and to implement machines that also produce voter-verifiable paper trails (i.e. visually readable printed ballots). We will do a number of security things right, where the commercial companies have done them wrong... they have aimed for "security through obscurity" or "just trust us." As well, part of our requirement is to have fully blind-accessible voting that maintains complete anonymity.
Anyway, I (David Mertz [mailto]) have taken over as Developer Lead recently, and am trying to get the development of the demo rolling. Part of that effort is recruiting some more developers, and splitting the project into several only loosely connected parts. Feel free to contact me--the standard ballot system (in the demo version at least) is being done in wxPython; but conceivably we would choose other languages/technologies for bar-code reading, printing, blind-voting, etc. (my preference is to use Python though, for consistency and rapid development).
this is so wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
Better yet, I think the bureau of printing and engraving should make some fancy counterfeit-resistant ballots, each printed/embedded with a unique serial number in a place where everyone can keep an eye on the process.
After the election, any unused/mismarked ballots must be accounted for. The ballots should have a matching stub with the unique number and what they voted for that the they can take home with them and may at any time go to the county clerk's office to verify that their ballot is still recorded as having said what they thought they said.
Re:The system is not the biggest problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:The system is not the biggest problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand what PROBLEM these electronic voting systems are intended to solve. Usability? Fraud prevention? Recountability? Non-centralized weakness? For ALL of those supposed problems, these electronic voting systems are WORSE than paper ballots.
The only advantage I see is that the electronic systems can count ballots faster, but we've never had problems with the speed of ballot counting. Ballot counting is easily parallelized across all voting precincts across the nation. In fact, that is a GOOD thing because the counting process is publicly overseen by representatives from all political parties and vote tampering is limited to a smaller set of votes.
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