Diebold Election Audit Logs Defective

mtrachtenberg writes "Premier Election Solutions' (formerly Diebold) GEMS 1.18.19 election software audit logs don't record the deletion of ballots, don't always record correct dates, and can be deleted by the operator, either accidentally or intentionally. The California Secretary of State's office has just released a report about the situation (PDF) in the November 2008 election in Humboldt County, California (which we discussed at the time). Here's the California Secretary of State's links page on Diebold. The conclusion of the 13-page report reads: 'GEMS version 1.18.19 contains a serious software error that caused the omission of 197 ballots from the official results (which was subsequently corrected) in the November 4, 2008, General Election in Humboldt County. The potential for this error to corrupt election results is confined to jurisdictions that tally ballots using the GEMS Central Count Server. Key audit trail logs in GEMS version 1.18.19 do not record important operator interventions such as deletion of decks of ballots, assign inaccurate date and time stamps to events that are recorded, and can be deleted by the operator. The number of votes erroneously deleted from the election results reported by GEMS in this case greatly exceeds the maximum allowable error rate established by HAVA. In addition, each of the foregoing defects appears to violate the 1990 Voting System Standards to an extent that would have warranted failure of the GEMS version 1.18.19 system had they been detected and reported by the Independent Testing Authority that tested the system.'"

Huh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds to me like touchscreen voting might have some problems with it.

Sabotage!

[jlmale0]

Actually, the logs were 100% accurate.

What we have here is a case of corporate sabotage by their competitors wanting them to look bad. Call me a conspiracy nut, sure. You're going to say these things are impossible to break into or tamper with, but this is the truth!

Re:Old news

[Anonymous Coward]

Only a VB programmer could make something as simple as:

candidates[choice]++;

as complicated as using Access on Windows.

Re:Fraud

[Anonymous Coward]

I vote we throw them all in jail!

YOU HAVE SELECTED ICE CREAM PARTY.

Wait. Now wait one minute, I *know* I voted jail...

Re:Fraud

[geobeck]

But if a corrupt group of politicians could rig the machines to get into power and (hypothetically, of course) start a war and that would cause many more deaths than some spurious bug in some medical equipment.

Pfft, like that could ever happen. And if it did, they'd be unceremoniously thrown out after a single term.

Re:Too bad, so sad

[m.ducharme]

Well, actually, these results are no more valid than Bush's results, if they were conducted with the same machine. One of the strongest arguments for a transparent voting system is that both parties can point to the system and say, "see, I didn't cheat. There's your evidence." With systems like the Diebold machines still being used, any election run on those systems is suspect, whether one party actually took advantage of the flaws to cheat or not.

The upshot is, that really, Obama's election isn't any more valid than Bush's.

This of course doesn't apply to all the other monkeying around with voters that happened in the Bush elections, like giving voters false requirements, asking for advance poll requests to be submitted on card stock, having "broken down" machines in pre-dominantly Democratic precincts, etc.

As to Palin, I'm hoping for a Palin/Limbaugh ticket in 2012, I think that would be great!

Re:seems like shared responsibility

[flyingsquid]

I just want to say... I told you so. I said it on election night and I'll say it again here, loud and clear, for everyone to hear: Obama stole the election. That may not go over well in some parties. But there is simply no way he could have won the popular vote or the electoral college. My polling models and my simulations all point to one unavoidable conclusion: the winner of the 2008 presidential election, and the rightful president, is Ralph Nader.

signed,

Ralph Nader

Re:Fraud

[caffeineboy]

CONSTITUTIONAL SMACKDOWN!!!